The Principle of Loss
by Aerugonian
Summary: In hindsight, facing off against Thor and Odin would really have been a better move than falling into the abyss. Dying would have been his first choice, but as his track record showed, Loki didn't usually get what he wanted. AKA: When Loki falls from the Bifrost, he lands in Truth's domain instead of Thanos'.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Loosely inspired by a prompt from MaiKusakabe.

Updates on Sundays.

* * *

Loki had thought there would be at least a little fear involved when facing his own death. Anger, maybe, or sadness, perhaps some regret thrown in the mix just for good measure. Numbness hadn't been on the list, but apparently it should have been at the top.

It was fitting that Thor's face would be the last thing Loki would ever see. Front and center in everything, like always, though it hardly mattered now, as the wind screaming past his ears faded into a deadly silence and the last glimmer of Asgard disappeared into the distance.

There was no air to breathe, and Loki found he didn't really care anymore.

* * *

"Welcome, foolish Trickster."

As it turned out, the afterlife was rather underwhelming. There was nothing but white, stretching out as far as Loki could see with no discernable end. The more he thought about it, the more unsettling his surroundings felt – everything seemed dead, down to the very air and the lack of any sort of smell or sensation.

The odd, layered voice was the only thing breaking the unnatural stillness of this place. Loki masked his surprise as he turned to find the source, his brow furrowing as he examined the odd being sitting on the ground and staring at him. At least he assumed they were watching him; it was hard to tell, what with the lack of visible eyes. They were just as white as their surroundings, only made visible by a blackish, blurred outline.

"You're not Hela," Loki said, clasping his hands behind his back and taking a step towards the unknown entity. "I'm still alive, aren't I?" Any other day this whole situation would have been thrilling. He'd never heard of a place like this, not in all the books he'd read of other worlds. He thrived on knowledge. Yet only a glimmer of interest surfaced, masked mostly by a resigned sort of disappointment. He should have known death wouldn't be that easy to come by.

The being's smile was unnaturally wide. "Your presence is a mistake, Loki of Asgard. You shouldn't be here."

Loki's gaze sharpened, the unsettling feeling in his gut growing more pronounced. Loki's reputation was hardly a secret in the universe, but pocket dimensions, especially undiscovered ones, should not have held that knowledge. "Who _are_ you?" he asked.

"You might call me the world. Perhaps the universe, or God, or Truth. I am All, I am One. And I'm also you." The unknown entity stood up, and Loki was struck by just how similar their silhouette was to his own. "At least, that's what I normally say when someone trespasses on my domain."

"I assure you, I did not intend to arrive here," Loki said.

"Most don't," the being – Truth, for lack of better options, he was hardly going to call him _God_ – replied. "That's not the point. _You shouldn't be here_. You don't belong here."

"Then send me back into the void." _Kill me._ "I have no one to tell of you." _I'm completely alone._ "You mentioned others have come here, is this any different?"

Truth just laughed, and Loki felt himself stiffen despite his efforts to appear unfazed. "You've opened a door that should have been left closed, sorcerer." There was a dulled bang behind him, and he turned to see a set of massive, unmarked stone doors that definitely hadn't been there earlier. "It was already cracked – if you can find what slipped through before you, I might even consider returning your toll!"

"What?" Loki had barely registered Truth's words before a wave of dizziness overcame him, his limbs suddenly feeling weak. The door was opening, a horrible groaning sound assaulting his ears, but his focus was on Truth, the once undefined being now clothed in rich shades of gold and green. Loki's armor.

Black tendrils were wrapping around him, dragging him back, and there was nothing he could do as he was pulled through and the door closed with a resounding boom.

Distantly he was aware he was screaming. The thousand years of his life were passing by in a myriad of colors and motion, all the information he'd ever possessed reasserting itself in his mind. The streams of data twisted away, offering a brief moment of reprieve before a soft blue light filled his line of vision. Something was there, just out of reach, and though he didn't know what it was he couldn't help but try to take hold of it. It disappeared, and suddenly everything was cold.

* * *

"…the hell?"

He was freezing. That had to be what this sensation was, though Loki had never actually experienced it before. The rough floor stung his skin, and he couldn't calm the tremors racking his body. It was absolutely miserable, and as far as he could tell he'd only been conscious for a minute or two. He cracked his eyes open, the lack of white settling his racing thoughts just a little, and tried to take in his new surroundings once again. It was a lot darker here, wherever 'here' was, yet as his eyes adjusted he could make out walls and bulky furniture. Not a black companion dimension, then.

A few seconds later he noticed the other person in the room, and really, how many times was he going to wake up in strange locations with people standing behind him? At least this man was relatively normal in appearance. Human, or at least mortal, given the clear fear written in his features and the gun in his hands. Aimed at Loki, like it would cause any lasting harm to someone like him. Had he somehow ended up on Midgard? It would explain the stupidity of pointing a gun at a god.

"Who are you? Where did you come from?" the mortal snarled, his fingers twitching on the trigger as Loki slowly sat up. He didn't respond immediately, taking a moment to further observe his current location. The concrete walls, lack of windows and staircase behind the stranger suggested a cellar of sorts. Books were haphazardly stacked on a low table, loose papers sticking out of the pages and covering the remaining surfaces. A strange, intricate circle was drawn on the floor surrounding Loki. It reminded him of some of the sigils he'd read about years ago, though this one was much more complicated than most he'd ever seen. Maybe this was a summoning sigil. It would explain how he got here, though not why he felt so weakened. The fall must have taken more out of him than he'd realized. He looked back at the mortal, whose nervousness seemed to have only grown in Loki's silence.

"Did you not look to bring me here?" Loki said, finding he wasn't really interested in the answer as he pushed himself to his feet, his shivering finally abating somewhat. The mortal's fear was already starting to get on his nerves, some of his anger from before his fall returning.

"I never activated it," the mortal said shakily, his eyes flicking to the chalk runes in obvious confusion. "I… I don't understand. How – stay back!" He stumbled back as Loki stepped forward, and the gun went off.

Loki was startled by just how much the bullet's impact hurt. Mortal weapons had evolved, it seemed. It took a few seconds before he realized he was not only bleeding from the new hole in his arm, but it wasn't healing.

 _What in Hel was happening to him?_

With renewed energy Loki stalked forward, his sudden speed startling the inept mortal, who shot at Loki again. It was obvious the man had never had any real training, considering the ease with which Loki disarmed him even with only one arm working properly. Within seconds Loki had turned the gun on its former owner.

"Tell me where I am," Loki said, gritting his teeth as another wave of pain radiated out from his limp arm. It hurt considerably whenever he attempted to move it, and his magic was not responding to him at all. The lack of magic left him with a gutted feeling that only grew more pronounced as he focused on calling upon it, dread setting in on top of the hollowness of his being.

The mortal whimpered, the pathetic sound reminding Loki of the task at hand. "My basement, i-in the east district of Central."

This was like pulling teeth. "And where, pray tell, is that located? Are we in America? On Midgard?"

"I-I've never heard of those places. We're in C-Central City, in, you know, Amestris?"

Loki resisted the urge to put a bullet in the mortal for making such inane assumptions. He'd never heard of Amestris, much less Central City. Still, it was likely on Midgard. The humans referred to their realm as something else, if he remembered correctly, though their name for it escaped him at the moment. It didn't matter. There were other ways to get that information.

Now that he thought about it, there really was no point in interrogating this obviously clueless human. There was no need to drag this out. He shot the gun, shoved it into the waistband of his pants, wiped at the splash of blood on his shirt (and why was he only wearing his undergarments? He'd been wearing his armor last he knew) and turned to look more closely at the circle now that he wasn't standing in it.

It still didn't look at all familiar, though some of the runes were reminiscent of some ancient, obscure forms of magic. A pentagon lay within the circle, with a triangle and three unknown symbols within the pentagon. Alien writing lined the edges of the circle and other portions of the design. He would have to look it up in Asgard's library later.

Well. If he ever returned to Asgard. It wasn't a particularly appealing option anymore.

For now, Loki needed to make his way out of this house. It appeared to have magic repelling wards upon it, and he was starting to feel a bit dizzy. Staying here also held the risk of running into others, especially if they'd heard the gunshots and came to check it out, and he didn't relish the idea of battling without his magic or his armor. With a last glance at the room, Loki stepped over the still body at his feet and made his way up the stairs.

It was becoming quickly obvious Loki was in worse shape than he'd thought, now that some of the adrenaline was fading out of his system. He still couldn't feel any trace of his magic and his muscles felt weak as he clutched his injured arm and maneuvered through the clutter of the house. As an afterthought he grabbed a dark jacket slung over a couch; he was far too tall to fit in it properly, but it could at least cover up the bloodstains on his green undershirt. He didn't bother trying to get his wounded arm through the too-short sleeve before stepping out the back door into a sparse, poorly maintained lawn.

The wards were still in place. Loki was still without his magic, and the blood loss was starting to become a real issue. At this rate he would have to resort to more primitive methods to stop the steady bleeding. Surely the wards did not extend beyond the yard; it would take a lot more power than most had at their disposal to stretch even to that distance.

Surely, he would have his magic back once he'd gotten that far.

The forest was all around him now, and it was like his very essence had been cleaved out of his chest.

* * *

It had gotten cooler as night fell, but Loki made no effort to move from where he was leaning against a tree. There didn't seem to be much of a point. All the energy he'd gotten from his brief encounter back at that accursed house had sapped away with every step he took. The hole in his arm had partially crusted over, bleeding sluggishly only when he moved it. He hadn't bothered to bind it, and mortal bodies had turned out to be a little more resilient than he'd given them credit for.

And that was what he appeared to be now. Mortal. Human. _Weak._

At first he'd been tempted to think of that strange white place as a dream, or a hallucination conjured by the unknown in the abyss. And while it remained a possibility, he'd been forced to consider it may not have been merely inside his head.

Regardless, that was almost definitely where he'd lost his godly status. Even his Jotun heritage seemed to have been stripped from him, small comfort as that was, though it left him vulnerable.

And with a time limit.

Mortal lives were substantially shorter than his own. In his ordinary body he would have no qualms over losing a few years, but now he ran the risk of aging beyond what he was comfortable with. If he had any hope of finding a way of finding a way to reverse whatever had happened to him, he had no time to waste on self-pity.

There was no way he would allow himself to die a mortal. It would be the worst humiliation of them all.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: In case anyone was wondering, this story takes place approximately 2 years after the events of the manga/Brotherhood.

* * *

Loki was far too refined to utter profanities. It was a matter of pride, and by the Nine, he was not going to stoop so low as to allow such foul language to color his impeccable character.

It didn't change the simple truth that he was _very_ lost.

There seemed to be no change in this endless stretch of trees and fields, and his attempt at climbing a tree to see further had left him with nothing but scratches and an ankle that hurt when he put his weight on it. Backtracking had also proved difficult – he hadn't been in the right state of mind to pay any attention to where he'd been going.

Oh, how the mighty had fallen. If only his father – no, not his father, _Odin_ – and Thor could see him now. Thor would mock him with his friends, the ones Loki used to consider his own friends. Odin would consider it a fair punishment and leave him to rot, like the weed in the family he'd always been. They likely thought Loki dead. Perhaps they were off celebrating, or perhaps they had the decency to go through the traditional mourning period, even if they didn't truly feel any grief. Then again, traitors didn't get mourning periods, nor those who took their own lives.

Loki's stomach growled, reminding him of the predicament at hand. It was so horribly inconvenient just how quickly this body required sustenance. He was without even his daggers, and he still hadn't found any signs of civilization. His arm ached terribly, his bare feet were bleeding and he felt lightheaded, like there was still a chance he could wake up and this all would have been nothing more than a vivid, terrible nightmare.

Looking up, he noticed what looked like a flat-topped dome in the distance, and some of his unsteadiness seemed to fade as he focused on a more concrete destination. There was no way that was a natural structure, and with luck that would mean civilization.

His optimism faded as he got nearer. The sounds of the forest seemed to fade the closer he got, leaving an eerie silence befitting the destruction surrounding him. It looked like a battleground. Charred trees and scorched earth had started to regain a little color, but it was obvious something had happened here. Surviving trees on the outskirts bore wicked gashes, some parallel and some, the deepest ones, singular. Trenches ran through the ground, all leading to the center of the destruction. To the dome.

It was massive, and frankly it was a marvel it was still standing. As he got closer, legs trembling of exhaustion, he realized it was made of the same materials as the ground, forming a structure that seemed almost impossible. The top had collapsed in and a quarter of the walls had crumbled, and it was obvious it had been here for some time. Loki's eyes lingered on the strange trenches converging on the dome. It was almost as if huge slivers of the land had been peeled up to create the dome, though how such a feat could be accomplished escaped him. Humans were craftier than he'd given them credit for. It would not do to underestimate them, especially not when he lacked an advantage.

The sun was beating down on him. It was nearing noon, by his best estimate. Exhaustion was wearing down on him even more in the exposure of the clearing, and the coolness of the shade was welcome when he hesitantly stepped into the dome. It was empty, unsurprisingly given the silence, yet small footprints littered the dirt. Surely civilization could not be too far away, if this was a place children visited, but he was too tired to continue on without some rest. He would lie down for just a few minutes. There was no time to waste on sleeping, not when he still did not know exactly where he was. He would find America, and from there he could locate the place known as New Mexico, and Thor's lover. That woman would be of no use to him, but Thor would undoubtedly find a way to return to her, and Loki intended to be there, waiting for him. Thor had always been too soft for his own good – surely Loki could convince him to find a way to restore Loki to his former glory. He would promise (or lie about) anything to achieve that goal.

* * *

"Is he dead?"

"No, I think I saw 'im twitchin'."

"Look, he's all bloody! He's totally dead!"

"Shut up, you idiots! He's moving!"

"Holy shit!"

"Somebody go get Marcoh!"

Awareness came slowly. Everything was sluggish and it was a struggle to do so much as turn towards the painfully loud voices. His head throbbed, and Loki wished he could just go back to sleep and ignore the fools disturbing his badly needed rest. When he attempted to snap as much, though, all that came out was a low groan, and he added a sore throat to his growing list of torments. His arm felt like it was on fire.

A couple blurry figures were leaning over Loki when he finally opened his eyes, and he recoiled instinctively. It was a movement he instantly regretted, but thankfully they backed off. Oh, Hel, he had to get out of here. He was far too vulnerable.

The world started spinning wildly when he tried to sit up and he collapsed almost immediately. It was pathetic just how easily his body was giving out, after all that effort.

It seemed like only seconds had passed before a horribly deformed face filled his vision. Maybe Loki had already died and gone to Hel. He didn't recall anything about demons or comparably ugly races living there, though it hadn't been his area of focus in his studies. It was an unfortunate face regardless.

Whoever it was, they were saying something, but Loki didn't have enough energy to focus on the words. It was doubtful to be anything of importance, and he was just so tired.

* * *

When he opened his eyes again, his surroundings had changed. It was dark aside from a flickering lamp, the meager light revealing a ramshackle room and that oddly disfigured man he vaguely recalled leaning over him back in the dome. The man took notice of his alertness and moved over to him with a plate of some sort of food, sitting down in a chair next to the thin cot Loki was lying on.

"Can you eat?" he asked in a rough, aged voice. Loki eyed him warily, cautiously pushing himself up with his good arm. The shabby blanket draped over him fell and he realized his shirt was missing, his arm now wrapped in bandages. The man seemed to take his silence as confusion. "I'm Dr. Marcoh. How much can you remember?"

"I was in a dome of earth," Loki said, choosing his words carefully as not to reveal more than absolutely necessary. "Some children found me. You were there." Although the mortal did not seem malicious, Loki wasn't sure just how safe he was. He had, after all, managed to kill one of their kind within minutes of his arrival, and his last appearance on Midgard had been even more destructive.

The doctor frowned. At least, it looked like he may have frowned. It was difficult to tell, with his face so distorted. Loki was tempted to ask about it, but it was doubtful such an inquiry would go over well. It would be best not to anger anyone for the time being. Marcoh placed the plate of food next to Loki, who took it with only a little reluctance. He was far too hungry to be too concerned about any contaminates – if they wished him dead or otherwise incapacitated, he was hardly able to put up much resistance. "You'd been shot. What happened?"

"I don't remember," Loki said. Predictably, Marcoh didn't seem to believe him. It was a weak lie, but Loki didn't have the energy to bother with an elaborate one.

"Of course not," the doctor muttered. He didn't press, a small mercy. Humans had a terrible habit of nosiness. "Can you at least tell me your name?"

"Erik." That had been the name of one of Thor's human companions, if he remembered correctly. Loki was unfamiliar with human naming conventions; it was safer to use one he'd heard before on Midgard. Marcoh looked like he was going to continue asking questions, so Loki deflected with one of his own. "Where am I?"

"Kanama. It's one of the slums right outside of Central," Marcoh amended when Loki showed no sign of recognition.

"I see." Loki was tempted to ask about the dome and its surroundings, but considering how distinctive it was it might be suspicious if he admitted to knowing nothing about it. He set his now empty plate down. "What time is it?"

"Five in the morning. You should try to get some more sleep, you need the rest." Marcoh stood up, moving to the curtained doorway. "I'll be in the next room over if you need anything, Erik."

Loki just nodded. There was no way he was staying, and the moment the doctor disappeared he was on his feet. His ankle and feet had been wrapped as well, and he couldn't help a ripple of gratitude. Only a small one – Marcoh _was_ a human after all.

A cursory examination of the room recovered his boots and pants, which he quickly pulled back on. His shirt had been cut apart, much to his disappointment, but he found a well-worn black shirt folded on one of the tables that would have to suffice. He left the jacket. It was too small to begin with, not to mention he'd stolen it from the home of the mortal he'd killed. The less they could link back to him the better.

The gun was gone, unsurprisingly. Marcoh had probably confiscated it. That was one more reason to leave. Loki had no idea how long he'd been here – probably at least a couple days, given the improved state of his injuries, and for all he knew Marcoh was out calling the guards. He didn't have time to look for the weapon, as much as he would have liked to hang onto it.

The window was small and an uncomfortably tight fit. Thank Valhalla he wasn't as broad as Thor, or he might as well have just busted through the wall. The thought brought a small smile to his face that disappeared almost as quickly as it had come. He shouldn't be thinking about Thor with any sort of fondness, not when it was that boor's fault Loki was here in the first place.

The narrow street – if you could call it that – he was on was devoid of people, though he could hear the slum waking up. There were more lights in the distance, and he set off towards them, hoping it was the city he was seeing. He needed to figure out where exactly he was and where he needed to go next, and neither the wilderness nor a slum like this was going to help him achieve that goal.


	3. Chapter 3

There wasn't much color in Central City. Most of the buildings were the same few shades of gray. It would be easy to get lost in a place like this, where nearly everything looked alike. The heights of the buildings was relatively uniform, and the streets were mostly straight with sharp junctions whenever they changed direction. Even the people seemed homogeneous – their clothes were primarily neutral in color. It was so unlike that little town Thor had found himself in.

It didn't take too long to locate a current events publication of sorts, apparently called a 'newspaper'. Titles screamed at Loki in large text, even accompanied by _photographs_. Remarkable. Asgard could learn a thing or two from these mortals, it seemed.

It took very little time to ascertain Loki was not in America, or any European country he knew of, but in a place called Amestris. They appeared to be in the middle of treaty negotiations with another country he hadn't heard of, Xing. They were moving forward with the building of a university, had silly little articles on inane things like housework (what place did recipes have in a current events publication?), and a frankly embarrassing article on the attractiveness of a certain military officer who he couldn't care less about. The headline article was much more interesting.

 _State Alchemist program to split from military._

Alchemy was a failed endeavor for wealth. It had never had any viable potential Loki had known of, and most humans should not have been capable of performing magic under any name to begin with. And the date on the newspaper was all wrong, too – the date on Midgard had been past 2000 his last visit, while this publication said 1917. Had he crossed into an alternate timeline?

Suddenly his certainty he was on Midgard didn't seem so absolute.

He didn't really understand most of what the article was talking about, though parts of it he could come up with some reasonable conjectures for. This was a militaristic country, given the titles of importance, with Fuhrer Grumman at its head. State Alchemists were simultaneously regarded as people of importance and as dogs.

The second page made him freeze for a moment. There was an article regarding a murder three days earlier, where the victim had been shot in their basement. Paranoia set in, and Loki stepped out of the main road before he read on.

They didn't mention any suspects, but that offered little comfort as it was very possible they simply weren't ready to release whatever information they already had. There was no mention of the strange circle on the ground, either, which Loki found odd. It seemed like something so unusual would have been at least referenced, unless it wasn't as unusual as he'd initially assumed. Maybe it was connected to the alchemy program the military had going, although he would have expected to wake up in a military facility rather than some dingy house if that was the case.

He didn't really feel like digging through the newspaper any longer. It went in the next garbage can he saw. A library would be more effective for information, and surely there was one somewhere around here. He would just have to ask.

* * *

A few inquiries and wrong turns later, Loki finally stood in front of what was apparently one of several libraries in the city. It was a massive building, dauntingly so considering his time constraints. He would need to take care to focus only on what was absolutely necessary, even if other tangents looked interesting.

The inside of the library was just as bland as its exterior, with a focus on functionality. Humans didn't seem to put any emphasis on style, which was a bit disappointing, because this was incredibly boring. At least he shouldn't be hurting for information with this many books to choose from.

When he finally got a look at a map, Loki almost wished he hadn't found one.

Nothing was familiar. It was all so horribly foreign, and the severity of the situation started to sink in. He wasn't in any place he'd ever heard of, surrounded by other nations just as unfamiliar as this one, without concrete knowledge on how he'd gotten here and with a human body that couldn't use sorcery. This wasn't just an alternate timeline, this was a completely different world altogether.

He exhaled slowly, sinking down into one of the chairs scattered through the library as he considered what he knew. This was not one of the Nine Realms, that much was clear. Somehow it seemed he may have fallen outside of Yggdrasill, a feat he hadn't thought possible up to this point, and from there he could potentially be anywhere in the universe.

Then there was Truth. The being had mentioned a toll of some kind, one Loki was willing to bet involved Loki's original form. That _fiend_ had taken Loki's powers and reduced him to a mere human, but calling it a toll suggested Loki had received something in return. Passage, most likely. But it sounded like Loki hadn't been the only thing to pass through that door. They had mentioned something else 'slipping through' the cracks.

Whatever, or whoever else had ended up in the world was what Loki needed to find. It was doubtful he could identify what didn't belong in this place without understanding his surroundings, though, so with a sigh Loki stood up to start picking out books for research.

Overlooking Midgardian subjects had been a mistake, Loki quickly decided. The limited information he did have of Midgard and its inhabitants seemed similar to what he was finding here, but he couldn't count on any of his Midgardian knowledge to be accurate.

Alchemy was far more ingrained into the country and its history than he had expected. Almost invariably there was a reference to the so-called science regardless of the type of book, and it didn't take long before he was picking up a text on the basics. If only magic had been so widely accepted on Asgard; it had always set him apart from his peers. Sorcery was a woman's subject, not something a self-respecting Asgardian man would study, but then again he'd never been a normal Asgardian. No wonder he'd been so hated even as a child: even if it hadn't been openly known, on some level it seemed everyone had been aware he was a monster in Asgardian form.

Feeling a little sick, he switched to the history books.

There was a lot of war in Amestris's past. It seemed a disproportionate amount to its short lifetime, one of many peculiarities he was noticing. The very _shape_ of the country was strange. It could be he was just reading too much into nothing, but something about it all just seemed off.

The library closed and Loki found himself out on the streets again, the crowds slowly starting to dissipate as dusk fell. Even without magic it wasn't difficult to pilfer a couple of wallets from unsuspecting mortals, netting him enough to buy some food and a night's stay at a hostel. Their currency was odd, worth far less than he would have expected per unit. With luck he wouldn't have to get used to it.

The room was tiny, far from the splendor of his palace quarters, but it was clean and the bed was adequate, if a little short. It was odd to be so much taller than the majority of the populace, accustomed as he was to Asgardian physiology. It was one of the few positives he had left at this point.

Loki spent the next few days in a similar fashion, his studies focusing on alchemy and science he wasn't already familiar with. The concept of equivalent exchange would be something to get used to, and an annoyance. It wasn't that his sorcery had no bounds, as it certainly did, but the rules for alchemy were much stricter. If only he could use magic.

He longed for his magic more than anything. It was such an integral part of him, its loss still keenly felt, like there was a physical extension of himself that had been torn away without care. He had to find his way back to Truth if he ever wanted to restore himself, and for that, he almost definitely needed alchemy. It didn't matter if he never made it out of this world if he could just become whole again.

In his ordinary form it shouldn't even be a challenge to subjugate this world. It was what Loki had wanted, was it not? A realm all his own to rule, as was his birthright. He was Loki, the God of Mischief, born to be a king. Return to the Nine Realms was inessential as long as he had his sorcery.

The sentiment seemed hollow, but with time he was sure his desire to reign would return.

* * *

Ed didn't think he'd ever get tired of seeing his little brother so alive.

The armor was still first to come to mind when Ed thought of Al, and even now, over two years after achieving their goal, it didn't seem completely real. Some of that could be blamed on how rarely they got to see each other lately, but still, it made his spirits soar whenever he saw just how much Al was thriving.

It was nice to think of something other than how his own life was falling apart all over again.

"It'll be fun to see the Brigadier General and Major Hawkeye again," Al said, his fingers playing idly with a loose thread on his shirt. He was always touching stuff, but Ed never brought it up. It always brought back some of the guilt, because Ed knew exactly _why_ Al had become so tactile.

"I just wish General Bastard would tell us what's so damn important that we have to come all the way out to Central," Ed griped. He had a feeling it wasn't going to be something he liked.

Al gave him the Don't-Be-A-Shit look. Al had a lot of Looks, with a capital L, and Ed was usually the one on the receiving end of them. His least favorites included the Sad Kitten Eyes (because Ed couldn't fucking refuse a thing when Al looked like someone had kicked his cat and then stepped on it again for good measure), the Withering Glare of Doom (even the armor had been able to give him that one), and the Look of Disappointment (which was self-explanatory, and the worst of them all).

The Don't-Be-A-Shit look? Ed got that one all the time. He might as well call it the _Don't-Be-A-Shit, Ed_ Look, because it was almost exclusively reserved for him. Unfairly. Politeness was overrated most of the time anyway.

"I'm sure there's a good reason he wanted to explain in person," Al said diplomatically.

"Yeah, well, I have stuff to do that doesn't include catering to his ass." That was sort of a lie, but Ed would never admit how much relief he'd felt at the chance to leave for a while, maybe let some time and space heal things. Mustang would never let him live it down.

Al hummed, turning to look out the train window at the passing scenery. "This is the first time you've heard from him since you left for Creta, isn't it?"

Ed frowned. "Yeah, so what?"

"So whatever's going on, it's probably pretty important."

They both fell silent. Ed slid a little lower in his seat, his fingers tapping out a staccato rhythm on his automail leg. It was obvious what Al was implying, and it wasn't an unfounded assumption. A few long minutes passed before Al spoke again.

"Do you think it's related to the homunculi?" Al's voice was soft, and Ed turned to look at him sharply. He didn't want to say yes. It was easier to leave the possibility unspoken. Al didn't talk about the year of the Promised Day very often, and even though he didn't say what they were about Ed was painfully aware of the nightmares. Sleep wasn't a peaceful undertaking half the time for either of them.

"I don't know," Ed finally said. "We saw them die, other than Pride, and they'd kill him if they thought he was going to be a problem. And all the others on their side were either killed or arrested. I was thinking they'd found another Philosopher's Stone or something, but that doesn't make sense either, because they've got Marcoh to deal with those, it'd be pointless to call us about it. Besides, he knows we're done with the military stuff. Minus the whole 'ambassador for Xing' gig you've got going, obviously."

Al smiled slightly. "I guess we'll find out soon enough."

The train was slowing down, the scenery changing from the country to the urban vitality he'd come to miss back in the countryside of Resembool. He hadn't been back in Central since he and Al had left for home and their extended travels, and an odd mix of nostalgia and apprehension washed over him as they pulled to a complete stop. They both grabbed their bags, sharing one last look as they stepped off the train and into the crowd.

"Thank fuck you ditched the mustache," Ed crowed the moment Mustang was within earshot. The brigadier general's amiable expression morphed into one of longsuffering, and Ed from the corner of his eye he could see Al giving him the Don't-Be-A-Shit look again.

"It's good to see you too, Fullmetal," Mustang said, his smile growing more sincere when he turned to Al. The fucker. "Thanks for coming, Alphonse. It's been too long; you've grown."

"Don't call me Fullmetal," Ed interjected, already getting tired of the pleasantries. "I haven't been a State Alchemist in two years."

"Then think of it as a term of endearment," Mustang said, leaving Ed spluttering as he turned to leave. "Let's go. It's not too far from here."

" _What's_ not too far from here? When are you gonna tell us what's going on?" Ed griped, matching Mustang's quick pace. He didn't answer right away, instead stopping at a car and waiting until they were all seated and pulling away from the curb.

"Tell me, have either of you heard of Leonard Moore?" There was no trace of humor left in Mustang's voice, and Ed felt himself stiffen slightly as he considered the name.

"I don't think so," Al replied, his tone wary.

"Me neither. Should I have?" Ed said.

"I didn't think you would. He was an alchemist, and a good one. We found his name on a list of possible recruitments to the State Alchemist program, but he wasn't very well known."

The subtext wasn't hard to pick up on. "How did he die?"

"We found him dead in his basement five days ago after a neighbor reported hearing gunshots." They turned onto a smaller street, nearing the edge of the main city. "We still don't know who the killer was."

"What, did you want us to look at the guy's research or something?" Ed asked. "Because I don't think either of us would help much with the whole 'crime solving' part of this."

"It would be easier to just show you," Mustang said with a sigh. He stopped the car next to an unassuming house, Hawkeye standing at attention by the door.

She saluted Mustang before looking at Ed and Al, her expression warming in greeting. "Hello, Edward, Alphonse. It's great to see you two again."

Al hugged her – he liked hugging everybody, the sap – as Ed followed Mustang through the front door. The house was very cluttered, wrappers and papers scattered over every available surface. It was reminiscent of Ed's study every time he got too caught up in his research.

"I really fucking hope you've taken the body out of here by now," Ed grumbled.

"What kind of person do you think I am, Fullmetal? Even in the name of crime scene preservation, five days is way too long to leave a body," Mustang said, giving Ed a withering look and starting down the stairs to the basement. The center of the stairs had been marked off – as had a section of the floors leading through the kitchen, Ed realized now that he was looking more closely – and were those bloodstains?

"Was the killer hurt or is that Moore's blood?" He wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer. There wasn't a lot of space to walk on as he made his way down the steps, where he could finally get a look at whatever had prompted an out-of-nowhere call from one of the highest-ranking officials in the military.

A giant human transmutation circle had been drawn in the center of the room.

Well, shit.

* * *

A/N: For clarification and anyone interested, here's a summary of pertinent events from the FMAB epilogue, or at least how I've interpreted them. Some liberties have been taken where things weren't explicitly addressed, if at all. Some elements were taken from the anime, others from the manga as listed below.

• The events of the Promised Day were covered up. Bradley was treated as if he was a hero who died for Amestris rather than a criminal to avoid riots and allow change to happen without bloodshed. Various other upper military officials were labelled as the guilty parties, and the general populace never found out about Father or the homunculi, or what the actual plan for the country was.  
• Selim Bradley / Pride was reduced to his infant form and has been growing up as a normal child with Mrs. Bradley. All the other homunculi have died.  
• Ling Yao returned to Xing with a Philosopher's Stone and became the emperor. May Chang returned as well but has been in regular contact with Alphonse.  
• Al traveled to Xing once his body had regained enough strength to handle it, joined by Zampano and Jerso (two of the chimeras originally affiliated with Kimblee).  
• Ed traveled to Creta around the same time Al left for Xing. He's been travelling regularly since then, learning all he can about different cultures and their variations of alchemy.  
• Mustang regained his sight thanks to the Philosopher's Stone Marcoh had, and was promoted to Brigadier General. The ending photos seem to show he's received another promotion to General. I'm guessing Hawkeye was promoted as well so I've got her listed as a Major.  
• Grumman became the next Fuhrer of Amestris and continues to hold that rank as of this story.  
• Scar recovered from his injuries and returned to Ishval with Major Miles to help with restoring the region and preserving the culture/religion.  
• In the anime, Havoc was healed by Marcoh before Mustang would accept the help. In the manga, he's shown to be going through rehab for his legs. I'm going with the manga version in this case, so he's still technically retired as of the events of this story.  
• In the manga Marcoh asks to return to Ishval as a condition of offering the stone to Mustang, but the anime omits this request. Obviously, since Marcoh was in Kanama (the slum next to the place where they fought Pride) I've gone with the anime version in this case.  
• Ed and Winry got together in typical awkward fashion. For the purposes of this fic, they haven't gotten married and they don't have any children. That picture of them and their kids hasn't happened (at least not yet).


	4. Chapter 4

Transmutations were much easier than the books had touted. Loki's experience with sorcery likely played a big role in that, of course, no matter how much the books claimed alchemy was a science. Granted, it was a very exact form of magic, but magic nonetheless.

It brought back a little of the excitement he'd had as a child when he'd learned his first spells, and the rush of energy accompanying the transmutation was exhilarating even in such a small dose. Visualizing the wood array he needed (carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, potassium…), he pressed his hands together and then to the desk, where a small figure of Mjölnir formed amongst blue sparks twisting like lightning. The transmutation was… louder than expected.

The librarian was less than pleased, and he restored the desk with her sharp reprimands still ringing in his ears. He'd wanted to snap back at her, but held his tongue in favor of retaining his library access, though at the moment that wasn't his main concern.

There was only so long Loki could keep up this lifestyle of stealing wallets and living in a hotel, and so far there hadn't been any true revelations in his studies. Unsurprisingly there hadn't yet been any reference to a god or other mysterious beings like the one he'd encountered, and the more time he needed for studying the higher his chances of getting caught became. He didn't have any sort of documentation on his existence, and he couldn't risk getting arrested and possibly connected to the death of that mortal he'd killed. He'd hoped to learn how to transmute gold, but apparently not only was it highly illegal but transmuted material had certain giveaways he'd noticed almost immediately. It made every fiber of his being burn with humiliation, but he needed a way to get money in a safer, legal way.

He needed to get a job.

Where would he even start looking? Without credentials his options were limited, and most of those he refused to even consider. Physical labor would be difficult with his arm still damaged from that damn bullet. Loki sorely needed some form of legal identification, but quality forgeries would probably cost more than he could safely steal at once. It was still worth looking into the shadier portions of society, if only for the contacts.

He left the library, taking with him a map of the city he'd surreptitiously torn out of a book. It was time to start planning for a more permanent arrangement in this world.

* * *

"I don't have any sorta work for ya, punk." The woman stared steadily back at Loki, taking a deep drag of her cigar. He tightened his jaw, a scream of frustration threatening to force its way out. Deep breaths, calm down. It would help nothing to lose control here, in a crowded, questionable bar of all places.

"Do you happen to know of anyone who might? I'm not particular over the type of work," he said, careful to keep his tone even and low. He was quickly running out of options; everyone he'd approached so far had turned him away. She narrowed her eyes, giving him a long, assessing look. He was well aware he didn't look all that impressive – his clothes had been cleaned in the washroom back at that scrappy inn, his hair refused to cooperate without the product he'd taken for granted in Asgard, and there was no hiding the dark circles under his eyes without his magic.

"Where're you from, kid?" she asked after a few long moments. Loki reared back, affronted by the nickname. He was over a millennia older than this _quim_ , how dare she refer to him as a child? She huffed, seeming to take his silence as surprise. "Your accent. Never heard one like it."

"Creta," he said after a moment, forcing himself to ignore the slight. She wouldn't believe his age even if he told her.

She eyed him skeptically. "Sure. You a spy?"

"Wha— _no_. I would hardly be looking for this flavor of employment if I was. Do I _look_ like a spy to you?"

"Shifty lookin' guy with a weird accent and expressions like someone's pullin' out his teeth half the time? Talks like he's got education but lookin' for a job in these sorts'a places? If you are a spy, you should quit, because you're terrible at it. What's your name, punk?"

Loki was going to look up the meaning of _punk_ once he had the chance. He deflated slightly at her comments. Apparently he'd been less subtle about restraining himself than he'd realized; maybe that explained his terrible luck. "Loki," he said, not wanting to fake his name if it wasn't necessary. It was one thing he still had, when so much had been taken from him. No one would recognize it anyway.

"Hmm." She lowered her cigar from rouge lips, still studying him. It was unnerving to be stared at so intently for so long, and only years of training kept him from fidgeting in discomfort. Finally she seemed to reach some sort of decision.

"Come back tomorrow, five sharp. I'll find something for you to do," the woman said.

Relief hit him like a tidal wave, his shoulders sagging as some of the tension washed away. "Thank you," he said, unable to help a smile.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm not gonna be payin' you much, so don't thank me too soon." She waved a hand at him dismissively, turning to leave. "If I'm not here, just tell whoever's at the counter that Madame Christmas hired ya." She was gone before he could respond, and Loki didn't linger.

The evening air was crisp as Loki stepped outside and started making his way back to the hotel for the last time. Accommodations had been much easier to find than a job, though his new "apartment" was little more than a closet. Still, it was affordable, and places like that didn't ask too many questions. He had a cover story in place as a traveler from Creta who'd been robbed, but he ran the risk of meeting someone who'd actually been to or come from Creta realizing he was lying. There was a surprising lack of information on countries outside of Amestris in the library, meaning he would have to make some of it up as he went.

Of course, he had no intentions of making any lasting acquaintances, much less friends. He had no need for fraternization with humans. He'd spent most of his life alone anyway.

* * *

"That has to be the stupidest theory yet."

"Well then, Fullmetal, do you have a better one?"

"They're _all_ better than that one!"

Two days. Two days of poring over notes and photos and physical evidence, and nothing was making any sense. For people who regularly did this sort of thing it might not have seemed like long, but Edward was anything but patient.

Some of the pieces were easy enough to put together. There had obviously been some kind of fight. Three bullets were fired; two had gone through the far wall (and at least one of them had hit their mystery person) while the third was still lodged in Moore's head. The killer, a guy going by the size of the bloody footprints, had been bleeding a lot when he left, a crimson trail marking his path out the back entrance and into the woods. He'd been barefoot, which was fucking weird, and he'd taken Moore's gun with him.

What was harder to explain was the signs that the human transmutation circle might have been activated.

The chalk was smudged in the center, a trough knocked to the side with traces of a familiar mix of elements inside, the telltale marks of a transmutation along the edges of the circle. It turned Ed's stomach just thinking about it. But Moore hadn't paid a toll, and there was no mangled corpse to account for the missing materials.

Ed groaned in frustration, dropping his head onto Mustang's desk. "It just doesn't make any fucking _sense_!"

Al poked his head into the office. "I figured out the code Moore was using for his notes," he said, and Ed shot back up.

"Anything useful? Did he mention a partner? Who he was trying to bring back?" Ed barged past Al into the main office, snatching up one of the rumpled journals. He could see Mustang following Al over to the table in his peripheral vision, the rest of the team ignoring them in favor of work under Hawkeye's sharp gaze.

"He didn't say anything about a partner, but you were right, I think he was trying to bring back his wife. And he was really close to actually activating the circle, too," Al said, taking the journal out of Ed's hands and flipping to the last pages. "Look, the dates here stop the day before he was killed. I think he might have been preparing all the last minute details. I was thinking someone found him with the circle and killed him before he could use it, so maybe we're looking for someone with a history in alchemy."

"Yeah, that's one the most plausible theories Mustang and I've come up with so far," Ed said, grimacing as he put the book back down. "I was hoping he would've mentioned some sort of assistant or something, someone who might have wanted to use the circle themselves. But that doesn't really fit either."

Mustang sighed, scrubbing a hand over his face. "I think we should call it a day. You two can stay here and look over the books some more if you want, but I have to get going. The Fuhrer wants me to take a look at another case while I'm conducting an investigation anyway."

"Anything related to this whole thing?" Ed doubted it, but it never hurt to be sure. Mustang shook his head as he pulled his coat on.

"No, I don't think so," he said. "Not unless you find something in Moore's notes related to explosive weaponry. If you need anything, ask the Major."

He left, and Ed turned back to the journals, dropping into a chair next to Al. His brother looked exhausted, in that mental way that had nothing to do with sleep. Suddenly Ed felt bad for asking Al to decode the notebooks, because as capable and resilient as Al was it probably wasn't fun to be poring over notes so reminiscent of their own all those years ago.

Scratch that, it definitely wasn't fun. This was dredging back up all these not-fun memories, there wasn't any 'probably' about it. So much for a break from all the stress back in Resembool.

He kind of wanted to call them, see if Winry was up for talking, but that was kind of a no-brainer. She needed some more time and then things would go back to normal, like every other time they fought like this. Fuck, he'd told himself he wasn't going to think about that right now. There were other things to focus on besides his failure at interpersonal relationships, like this stupidly complicated weirdness. It served as a really good reason to stay out here. New environment, something to focus his brain on, all that good stuff.

"We should take a break," he suggested, and Al looked up from the notes in surprise.

"What? But you haven't read all the decoded notes yet," he said, though Ed didn't miss the glimmer of relief in Al's eyes. See, he _could_ 'put people above his research'.

"I'm gonna go crazy if I'm stuck here much longer," Ed replied, stretching as he stood up. "Besides, I wanted to go see the plans for that new university they're building; heard they're putting together a list of programs they'll be teaching right now."

Al grinned, following Ed out as the team called out their goodbyes. His eyes were glinting with that optimism Ed loved so much. "I wonder if they'll have any medical degrees, or even alkahestry. Wouldn't that be incredible? We could have someone from Xing come and teach alkahestry, and send someone from Amestris to teach alchemy in Xing once the treaty's passed! You should see it, brother, there's so much we could learn from them."

"Yeah? I bet you were thinking of asking May to come teach," Ed teased, smirking at the flushed It's-Not-Like-That look Al adopted every time Ed brought May up.

" _Brother_ ," Al protested, and right on cue, "it's not like that!"

Ed raised his eyebrows. "You do know everyone already thinks you're dating her. Neither of you are exactly subtle."

"She's only fourteen," Al said with an air of finality, "and I'm seventeen. I'm not going to take advantage of her like that."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever you say. It's not like she hasn't had a crush on you for the last two years. How long are you gonna make her wait? Isn't thirteen the legal age in Xing?"

Al went silent, not the good silent, and Ed let up a little, feeling a bit guilty. "I just want you to be happy, Al, but I guess I'm not really the guy you should take relationship advice from. Sorry."

"I just want to be careful," Al said with a sigh. "It's not only the age thing, you know that. She's a _princess_ , and I'm just… me."

"And you're a foreign ambassador, accomplished alchemist, and literal son of the Eastern Sage. You've got a lot going for you, and there's no way Ling would forbid a relationship. Hell, he'd probably be thrilled if you brought it up."

"Maybe… but I'm not sure I'm ready, anyway." Al gave Ed an uncertain glance, nervously fingering the hem of his sleeve. "I've always been seen as the responsible one – " and ouch, Ed couldn't deny that, no one ever referred to _Ed_ as the responsible one, "but there's so much I still want to do before I settle down. Like school. I've been saving a lot of the money I've been earning as an ambassador, and when the university opens I think I'm gonna apply."

"Really? That's great, Al!" Ed beamed, smacking Al's back with enthusiasm. Al had come a long ways since regaining his body, and it always filled Ed with joy to see. He was really becoming independent, no longer relying on Ed even for finances.

But in the corners of his mind crawled the fear that Ed would no longer matter, that Al would move on and leave Ed behind. It was stupid, of course. Al wouldn't just forget about him. Yet it felt like everything Ed touched crumbled, starting with his disastrous plan to bring their mother back to life.

The guilt from that whole catastrophe was building up again the more he had to look at that fucking human transmutation circle.

With luck they would find the killer quickly, with a nice and tidy explanation for all those weird contradictions. Or at least a plausible explanation. Hell, he'd take a sort-of-plausible-but-completely-ridiculous explanation.

Pretty much anything would be better than that crackpot theory of Mustang's that something – or someone – alive might have been pulled through that array. That was one theory he didn't even want to _think_ about.

* * *

So, this is where the knowledge from Truth comes into play. I thought a lot about how to incorporate it into the story, because it seems like a natural byproduct of passing through the Gate, but it isn't within Truth's nature to make things so simple. Everyone in FMAB who's seen Truth has the ability to transmute without physical arrays (minus Ed after giving up his gate) and it seems like they are also able to identify the periodic elements in their surroundings at a glance. I figured in Loki's case, Truth would give him comprehension vs. straight knowledge. Thus, he understands alchemic theory faster than normal and is able to use what he knows in a much more advanced way than someone who hasn't passed through the Gate, but he does have to study alchemy first. It hasn't even occurred to him that others can't just envision an array to transmute, because it's a simple concept for Loki. If that makes sense.

The short explanation is that Truth is a troll and does whatever the hell he wants to.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter content warning: skip to the end of the chapter for details.

* * *

Loki was having dreams.

Granted, dreams were an ordinary occurrence, so the mere presence of them was not a surprise. Even the yellow and blue lighting could be explained away as a mental quirk of some sort, though he would have expected green, or gold, or even red to be the color of prominence.

The niggling feeling that he'd forgotten something important was the more troubling aspect of these dreams.

There was something there, just out of his reach. But every time he tried to grasp it, it slipped away, and he awoke with frustration coursing through his veins. This, interspersed with dreams of the Bifrost and Thor and his own horrifying heritage made sleeping a miserable necessity. The longer he spent in this world alone, the more difficult it got to ignore the memories constantly making themselves known. He spent too much time in his own mind and he knew it.

Had Odin told Thor about Loki's true lineage, now that he had seemingly died? Would Thor hate him for it, or for the things Loki had done in his desire to finally show Odin what he was capable of? It all seemed so worthless now. It was obvious Odin had never seen Loki as Thor's equal, and never would. Of course he wouldn't – the Frost Giants were monsters, and Loki no better. Even his sorcery had been looked down upon, because true men used physical strength to defeat their foes, not something so cowardly as magic.

It didn't seem so different here, either. Those skilled enough to become State Alchemists were called dogs of the military, despite the power some of them supposedly wielded. Though at least in this world conditions seemed to be improving as the State Alchemist program was officially separated from the military three weeks after Loki's arrival. Alchemists not part of the program seemed to have a decent enough reputation too.

His life had fallen into a tolerable routine. Loki woke early, letting out his frustration and anger through exercise (human bodies lost muscle so quickly; it took way more effort than he was accustomed to in order to keep up his muscle mass). He would spend most of the day at the library persisting in his studies of alchemy, searching for any reference to Truth, other dimensions and worlds, or anything else that even hinted at a way of alchemic transportation. So far he hadn't had any success, but there had to be _something_ out there. His evenings were spent in Madame Christmas's bar, mostly cleaning after pathetic drunkards or serving drinks if none of the attractive, sociable girls were available. The pay wasn't good, but it was enough to live off.

Loki despised it, of course. It could have been worse; the girls were actually quite nice despite his prickly demeanor, and no one asked uncomfortable questions of his past. Madame Christmas was strict and abrasive, and he was reasonably sure she was operating as some sort of informant for someone whose identity was very carefully concealed. He didn't really care. This job was convenient, the company and occasional conversation was a welcome break from his solitary days, and he even got free food and drink (in reasonable quantities, they'd stressed) while he was there.

Valhalla forbid, he'd even been propositioned a couple of times by patrons. Clearly these humans weren't in their right minds.

* * *

Time passed.

* * *

Loki got ahold of identification documents four weeks after waking up in Amestris.

* * *

At five weeks he was starting to think he might never find even a brief mention of Truth.

* * *

Six weeks, and Loki calculated he'd probably lost around seven years of his lifespan.

* * *

Time was passing far too fast for the crawling progress he was making in his research. The practice of alchemy itself was easy to pick up and expand on, though it was interesting he'd found no mention of a technique of mentally envisioning the transmutation matrices like he'd been doing. It wasn't difficult, surely a few talented alchemists had figured it out. Another side effect of his magical knowledge, perhaps. But absolutely _nothing_ on anything related to Truth.

He'd hoped to avoid this, to find what he needed within the public library, but he was starting to question just how many years of his life he was willing to give up at this rate, on the steadily shrinking chance he'd stumble upon something useful here.

He needed access to the library branch restricted to State Alchemists and the military.

It took one look at the security system surrounding it to know he wasn't sneaking in, not without a lot of risk. Amestris did not take security threats lightly, and he had to wonder what type of books required such strict control. He resigned himself to the public library, just until he could come up with a way to reduce the threat.

* * *

Seven weeks after arriving in this world, Loki found a body on his way to his apartment after a late work shift.

He ignored it, because what did it matter if a human had died? It was part of their mortal nature, nothing of concern to him. If the stench of alcohol permeating the area was any indication, the wretch had just drank themselves into expiration. He stepped over the corpse and continued on his way.

Finding a second body less than half a mile away gave him pause.

All his senses went into high alert, his posture straightening as Loki scanned the silent streets for anything out of place. The night seemed even deader than usual, darkness crowding in around the streetlight illuminating him and the corpse, distant sounds of the city echoing. A couple minutes of searching passed before he crouched apprehensively by the body, studying it for any foul play.

It was a young boy, only just entering adolescence. Green eyes stared blankly ahead, black hair fanned out around his face, looking almost peaceful in death. Loki reached out, pressing two fingers to the boy's neck, searching for a pulse because he just had to be sure, the smell of metal lingering in the air. The skin was warm under his fingertips and several long seconds dragged by before he yanked his hand back, that foreign sensation of _cold_ settling into his bones.

He wanted to be anywhere but here, staring at the body of a mere child. He shouldn't have stopped. It would have been better to keep walking, to mind his own business, to not concern himself with the death of a mortal. Yet he couldn't look away. He'd seen bodies before, taken lives with his own hands, but he'd never observed the dead longer than absolutely necessary, and he'd never been present during a battle where children were involved.

 _"A warrior does not avert his eyes from death," Odin says._ _Loki says he can't, because the dead surround them, and to look away from one means looking at another anyway._

Loki steeled himself and reached out again to look for the fatal wound.

He wasn't sure how he'd missed it until now.

Half of the boy's midsection was just gone, a gaping hole in its place, blood thick and sticky and thank all of the Nine Realms the light did not illuminate the details enough to actually tell if the organs had fallen out. A coppery stench settled heavily around him, turning stale and he could taste it on his tongue when he tried to breathe through his mouth instead. He retched, stomach roiling as he forced himself to look away from the damage

 _A memory of blue danced in his mind, just out of reach._

" _HEY!_ " A loud yell startled Loki out of his thoughts, and he didn't stop to think before he leapt to his feet and bolted into an alleyway, the shouts for him to stop fading as he escaped under the cover of the shadows.

Loki didn't bother attempting to sleep that night.

* * *

Something was seriously wrong in this city.

The previous night's events brought it to the forefront of Loki's mind, and now that he was looking he could see the signs of uneasiness descending on the humans around him. Tension thrummed under the surface. He read some of the news articles he'd previously labelled as unimportant, that child's eyes haunting him and redirecting his focus from his alchemic studies.

These unexplained murders had been happening for a while, starting a couple weeks after Loki landed in Amestris, and Loki had been too wrapped up in other matters to even notice until it was literally staring him down.

None of the articles had much information. They tended to refer to the wounds as being caused by small explosions, sometimes with damage to nearby surfaces, sometimes with civilians claiming to have heard a blast of some sort, different descriptions every time.

Yet there were never any witnesses to the moment of death. If more than one person was present, then none of them lived. And then there was the odd article questioning a bizarre phenomenon of eyes changing color overnight, primarily in military officials, claiming no adverse effects despite concerns in the general populace.

He had a feeling he knew what was killing these people, and he couldn't decide if the tendrils snaking through him were elation or dread.

* * *

Central Command was an imposing structure. Towering over the rest of the city, it had clearly been built with the intent to intimidate. The differences in material color and age in its walls suggested it had been through at least one battle in its time.

Privately, Loki thought the blue uniforms of the officers looked ridiculous, but then they probably would have said the same of his old green and gold garb.

"I would request an audience with General Roy Mustang," he said in the office by the entryway, where several military officials stood guard. The woman behind the counter raised an eyebrow.

"And you are?"

"Loki Laufeyson."

She glanced down at a stack of papers sitting in front of her, then back up at him, clearly unimpressed. "I'm sorry, but your name's not on the list. You'll have to make an appointment."

He played the card he was nearly certain would attract their attention. "I have some information regarding the recent string of deaths, if he is amenable to hearing it."

She stiffened, her gaze sharpening. "General Mustang isn't the one in charge of that investigation. That's Colonel Douglas."

"But he is not an alchemist." Probably. "I wish to speak with General Mustang."

Another officer came over and she whispered something to him, both of them looking back at Loki. He kept his stance relaxed. Showing nervousness would only heighten their already growing suspicion. The second officer left and she leaned forward to address Loki again. "Take a seat for now, Mr. Laufeyson. We'll get back to you shortly."

He nodded and sat down, fingers tapping out a staccato rhythm on the chair's armrest. This would likely go one of two ways – either he would get the audience he'd requested, or he'd be brought in for interrogation and possibly arrested.

The Flame Alchemist. It was risky, attempting to contact someone so powerful both in politics and alchemy. He was a public figure, well-liked by most of the general populace and regarded as a hero for his role in the Ishval Civil War and in leading a coup against a few corrupt generals in Central two years ago. Significant achievements for one as young as Roy Mustang was. It was clear the man was intelligent and a master strategist in addition to possessing powerful abilities.

This combination would be immensely useful to Loki if he could get the general on his side.

Close to an hour passed before Loki was escorted from the lobby and into the military base, something he suspected was partially a power play. The interior was just as utilitarian as its exterior, following in the theme of most other buildings Loki had visited in the city. Really, the utter lack of style or visual interest around here was depressing. At least Asgard had flair, gaudy as it was.

They turned into an office, where several obviously curious officers watched Loki enter. The aide who'd taken Loki here saluted to a young woman (a major, going by her rank insignia) and left. The woman was stone-faced, giving nothing away as she addressed him. "Mr. Loki Laufeyson?"

"You must be Major Hawkeye," he said, clasping his hands behind his back. She didn't react, not looking even a little surprised he'd known her.

"The general is a busy man," she said, motioning him towards a door on the right. "Try not to waste too much of his time." Loki's lips quirked up; she was smart, not putting her back to him. The Major was not someone to take lightly.

"I wouldn't dream of it," he replied, entering the smaller room with Hawkeye right behind him. It was furnished in richer, earthy tones, a nice change from the stark grays he'd grown accustomed to. Behind the desk sat the man he recognized from photographs as General Roy Mustang, his hands folded in front of his face as he studied Loki intently with dark eyes. Loki's eyes zeroed in on the general's gloves. There was an alchemic array stitched into the fabric. An interesting choice – did Mustang not have any concern of his fire alchemy being replicated?

"General Roy Mustang," Loki greeted. Mustang didn't respond for a few moments, just watching silently as Loki moved to stand in front of the general's desk.

"You said you had information on the recent string of deaths," Mustang said, his voice without any emotion. So Hawkeye's stoicism was not unique here, then. Oh, this was going to be fun.

"I might," Loki said vaguely, a slow smile stretching across his face. "But first I have a question for you, Flame Alchemist. Tell me, have you ever heard of a being who calls itself Truth?"

* * *

Warning: there is a description of the dead body of a child, with some details involving the fatal (vaguely gory) wound. If anyone is triggered by that and wants a chapter summary or something let me know in the comments, or send me an ask on Tumblr. The mention happens in the scene starting with "Seven weeks after arriving in this world" for those who just want to skip that part. References to the event will be made in future chapters, but not in graphic detail.


	6. Chapter 6

"Tell me, have you ever heard of a being who calls itself Truth?"

Roy stiffened, his eyes narrowing, and he could see Riza putting a hand on her gun holster from her position behind the man. Alarm bells were blaring in his head as he studied the stranger standing in front of him. This man – Laufeyson, if that was his real name – was dangerous.

Laufeyson's stance was relaxed, his demeanor seemingly calm, but his green eyes were sharp and probing. His black hair was slicked back and he towered over the desk, significantly taller than average, a well-fitted suit giving him a very business-like – and dodgy – vibe. The man's smile broadened slightly, and Roy knew he'd noticed his reaction.

"I've heard the name," Roy said evenly, letting a mask of indifference shutter his expression. Memories of an unnerving smile and endless darkness flashed by, his throat suddenly feeling dry. He could feign nonchalance all day, but at the end of it Truth would still appear in his nightmares. "Though I'm not sure what that has to do with the reason I agreed to speak with you."

Roy hadn't known what to think when he received a message stating a civilian man had approached Central Command, requesting to meet with Roy and hinting at information regarding the series of murders in the city. There weren't any reasons why _he,_ a man not directly connected to the investigation, would be the one sought after that came to mind.

He had a feeling Laufeyson was testing him. Searching for some sort of confirmation, maybe hoping to trade information. It was very possible the man didn't know anything at all about those deaths and this was all a bluff.

But he couldn't just ignore a possible source of information, especially when they weren't making much progress in the case. They weren't ordinary explosions, that much had been clear once the investigation kicked off. Everyone in the upper echelon was aware of this case at this point.

They hadn't been caused by any weapon they were aware of, and there was no sign of alchemy usage.

"It's hard to tell, General," Laufeyson said, gracefully taking a seat across from Roy's desk with a flourish. "Now, I'm sure you know where this is headed. I would like to offer an exchange."

It was hard to get a read on this guy, aside from the arrogance leaking through. It was obvious every move he made and everything he said was calculated and planned, learned from what Roy suspected was an aristocratic upbringing of some sort. Laufeyson's accent was unfamiliar, as was the name he'd given – unusual enough, possibly, to actually be his real one. It was hard to say for sure. It wouldn't surprise him if the guy just turned out to have a flair for the dramatic. "I'm not convinced you have anything to offer in the first place. Why should I listen to you?"

Some of the mirth vanished from Laufeyson's expression, and he leaned forward slightly. "Because there are lives at stake, General. You speak of the people, of making reforms in this country to bring an age of democracy, to give power to the people rather than hold it to yourself. If there is but a sliver of truth in what I say, you would want to hear it."

Almost definitely a foreigner, though he was well-versed in Amestrian politics. He held off on commenting on Laufeyson's observations, true as they were. "You keep saying you have information, but you haven't given any proof that you really do have any. I won't even consider making a deal without some assurance that you're not just spouting off nonsense."

Laufeyson paused, seeming to mull it over for a few moments before responding with a question that didn't make much sense. "Have you done any examinations of the mental states of those officers who have suddenly presented with blue eyes?"

"What?" Roy's eyebrows furrowed in confusion. He'd heard of the phenomenon, even knew a couple officers who'd been affected, but it was generally agreed it was little more than an unexplained cosmetic change.

Laufeyson rolled his eyes, his mask slipping just long enough to show his annoyance. "I've seen the articles of that strange phenomenon. People's eye colors suddenly changing without any good reason, no other physical symptoms, yet the majority of them are military officers. It seems a bit strange, does it not?"

Roy wasn't sure if he should answer the question. It didn't seem to have any connection to the deaths, and he really couldn't see the purpose behind the query in the first place. "We've performed some examinations and found no side effects to the eye color change."

"But those examinations are focused on the physical, I presume," Laufeyson said. "Granted, mental effects are harder to detect, but it seems like a rather significant oversight if you really didn't perform any psychological examinations. I do hope you at least bothered with a basic one, even if the results turned up normal."

Was Laufeyson suggesting those officers had been compromised? The possibility that a growing faction of the military was being mentally altered was disturbing to say the least. He didn't have to fake the disbelief coloring his tone. "You're saying they've – what – turned evil because their eye color changed? Are blue eyes a crime now?"

Laufeyson waved his hand in dismissal. "Oh, no, the eyes themselves have little to do with it, you're not wrong. But you have to admit it's an unnatural change, and I'd be a bit disappointed in your skills if you did not think it was at least a little suspicious. It suggests something is wrong even if it's not immediately obvious what."

He didn't like what Laufeyson was insinuating here, at all. If true, this was something entirely different from what they'd dealt with regarding the homunculi. Someone who'd found a way to alter the minds of soldiers was incredibly dangerous, even more so if he managed to get to those with positions of power. He'd need to check in with Grumman and ensure the Fuhrer remained protected, just in case, because if the Fuhrer fell under enemy control then the results had catastrophic potential. It wasn't worth the risk, as unbelievable as this sounded. He was getting ahead of himself, though, so he decided to address Laufeyson's suggestion rather than continuing further with theory. "What do you think we'd find if we did those mental checks?"

"That, my good General, is as much as I am willing to say for free," Laufeyson said, leaning back in his seat with an almost pompous air. Roy gritted his teeth. Right now he wasn't even sure what he was supposed to be looking for, aside from the vague idea of something out of the ordinary. Yet basic checks had come back clean, so either this was a subtle alteration, the soldiers were good at hiding it, or (more likely) Laufeyson was lying and/or hiding crucial details.

"What are your terms?" Roy asked, hoping to hell and back it wasn't anything too big. Honestly, he was probably crazy for even considering it. He'd known this man for all of five minutes; he should just kick him out and be done with it. But Laufeyson knew about Truth, and that was not exactly common knowledge – either he was intelligent enough to come up with and use a human transmutation array, or he had information he shouldn't have. And if he really did have information about the murders, then he really wanted it; without much progress being made trust in the government was degrading and lives were being lost in the meantime. As much as he preferred not to negotiate with people like this, if it was a reasonable monetary sum he would probably get the go-ahead from Grumman if Roy thought it important enough to take the risk. It wouldn't have been the first time they'd made deals with less scrupulous sources.

"Nothing much," Laufeyson said, the intense way he was eyeing Roy suggesting otherwise. "I want access to the second Central Library branch."

Roy wasn't sure if he wanted to laugh or groan. Access to that branch required pretty high clearance or a State Alchemist rank. That sort of request would never be approved for someone like Laufeyson, and for good reason. Technically Roy had the clearance to bypass that restriction, but there was no way he was letting this guy get anywhere close to those books. "Right. Sorry, I can't help you there. If you're looking for something in specific, maybe I can find someone who can help you, but the Second Branch is off limits to anyone not of sufficient rank, and after vetting." He'd probably send a strong warning to whoever he suggested to Laufeyson, if the guy actually agreed to this. He doubted it.

Laufeyson was silent, an assessing expression on his face, way longer than Roy expected him to be. He'd kind of expected an instant rejection.

"You were alarmed when I mentioned Truth," he finally said, and Roy felt himself tense slightly. Of course the conversation would lead back to that bastard. "I assume he is not common knowledge, even among alchemists, am I wrong?"

This guy couldn't be serious. "Of course he's not common knowledge. I seriously doubt you'll find many references to him in any books, including the ones at the Second Branch."

Laufeyson slumped, his disappointment looking much more genuine than any other emotion he'd shown so far. "Damn," he muttered, reaching up and scrubbing a hand over his face. A couple seconds later he glanced back at Roy, his eyes narrowing. "Then how did you come to hear of… him? them?"

"I could ask the same of you," Roy shot back.

"By the Nine, this is going nowhere," Laufeyson grumbled. "I met Truth a while back, that is how I know of them. Your turn."

Finally, a straight answer. A disquieting one, because there weren't many things someone could do to meet Truth and all of them related to the forbidden aspects of alchemy. Roy suspected he wouldn't get anymore without offering information in kind, even if it wasn't the full truth. "I knew someone who met them," he said, hoping Ed wouldn't crucify him for giving out that detail. Laufeyson didn't seem like he really believed Roy, but he didn't argue over it.

"I would like to make a deal with you, then," Laufeyson said. "A treaty, of sorts."

"Entailing?"

"The sharing of information, obviously." He rolled his eyes. "I am not foolish enough to go against our common enemy alone, and you need the knowledge and support I could offer. You have knowledge I need. You are a clever man, General, and I think you see just as well as I do that we are going to endlessly run circles around each other unless we come to a mutually beneficial agreement. To put it simply, I will present the information and skills I have, and you will do the same for me."

"I can't just give out classified information," Roy said. And he wasn't promising anything like 'his skills' to Laufeyson anytime soon (read: ever).

"Information relevant to this case, then," Laufeyson amended. "And whatever you know of Truth. List me as a consultant, or an informant if you need to justify it. Remaining off the books may be a better solution for you, though."

Roy should just refuse and be done with this. There was little doubt this man was untrustworthy, probably highly intelligent and possibly insane.

"You know I could have you arrested for attempting human transmutation," Roy pointed out. Laufeyson looked… confused. Not really the reaction Roy was expecting.

"I have no reason to attempt such a thing," Laufeyson said, and what the hell? Roy had a sinking feeling the guy was just a nutcase.

"Then how the hell did you encounter Truth?"

"…I woke up there."

He was really starting to get a headache from this. "You just woke up there."

"Well, yes. That's what I just said."

"Right," Roy said disbelievingly. He sighed. "Can you at least tell me what was taken from you? There's no way I can even consider making a deal with you if I can't believe every other word that comes out of your mouth."

Laufeyson's face went perfectly blank, his fingers curling into the fabric of his suit. "My identity."

Roy just stared at him. This encounter was making him feel some remorse for everyone he'd ever pulled the 'cryptic and purposely confusing speech' tactic on. "You mean they took your memory?"

A slight pause. "Yes. Well, parts of it. It's all rather confusing, to be honest."

Confusing was a mild word in this case. Roy wasn't sure how much he believed him, but he might be able to use this to his advantage. "All right, I'll make you an offer. You tell me everything you know related to those deaths, and if I tell you to do something you do it. In return I won't have you arrested, and I'll answer some of your questions if I deem it appropriate." Laufeyson looked like he wanted to argue, but Roy held up his hand to stop him. "Look, this is the best offer you're going to get. No negotiating on it. There's a reason you came to me, and almost anyone else would just arrest you if you tried half of what you've tried here. You're playing a dangerous game, Mr. Laufeyson."

Laufeyson's jaw was clenched, his voice deceptively light. "And you would risk the lives of Amestris's citizens? The death count is only going to rise."

"I don't think you want that either, honestly. But even what I _am_ offering you is already a gamble when I don't know for sure that I can trust you."

Cold pale eyes glared at Roy, a full minute passing in silence before Laufeyson seemed to decide Roy wasn't bluffing. Finally, he nodded. "I agree to your terms," Laufeyson said, his smile brimming with murderous intent.

It wasn't like Roy had any intentions of letting his guard down around him. He foresaw a lot of glove-wearing in his near future.


	7. Chqpter 7

Loki hadn't wanted to kill someone this much in a long time.

Well, no, that wasn't entirely true. He'd been homicidal enough to kill Laufey, and Odin had been holding his rank at the top of Loki's hate list for a couple months now.

Roy Mustang was a strong contender at the moment, though.

It was obvious how Roy Mustang had made it to the rank of General at only thirty-two years of age now that he'd met the man, and Loki was coming to understand he'd underestimated Mustang. Granted, Loki had expected to have to negotiate, but he'd been thinking he'd at least receive a few books from the library even if he couldn't enter it himself.

Of course, Mustang had latched onto Loki's desperation as much as Loki had tried to hide it.

 _Blank eyes stared back, cloudy in death._

At least he'd avoided having to explain what he'd actually lost to Truth, because there was no way Mustang would have believed it. Supposed memory loss meant any slipups on Loki's end would be a little easier to explain away, too.

"So," Mustang said, a gleam in his eyes, "care to explain what you know about those deaths?"

This was not going to be easy to rationalize. "I'm sure you've heard of the Philosopher's Stone," he started, but Mustang interrupted him.

"You're saying a stone is involved? They should have all been destroyed, unless someone is making new ones."

Loki blinked, processing this new information. In the texts he'd studied the stones had been mentioned more as a legend than as anything real, as a substance of philosophy and not of reality. Apparently this wasn't the case. He'd almost wondered if it was just another name for an Infinity Stone, but considering they could not be destroyed through any known means he figured that theory was out. "I suppose it's possible," he said slowly, "but I don't know enough about them to say for sure. I was unaware that they were more than legend."

Mustang looked like he regretted saying anything at all. Loki took advantage of the silence to continue. "Over in… Creta, where I'm from, we have a legend of our own, known as the Infinity Stones. It has a similar concept to your Philosopher's Stones in granting the user massive amounts of power if you know how to use them correctly. According to mythology, they were separated thousands of years ago and hidden. I fear one of them may have been found and taken into the city."

"So they aren't so legendary after all," Mustang said, and Loki let out a silent breath of relief. He'd expected a little more skepticism out of the general, but it made things so much easier if he was willing to keep an open mind. The revelation of Philosopher's Stones existing did shed his story in a new light. "You don't think they're just Philosopher's Stones under a different name?"

Loki shook his head. "No, they look and behave differently from your Philosopher's Stones. I saw this one, if you'll believe it, when I was passing through the Gateway; but I didn't realize what it was I'd seen until recently."

"So, what is it exactly? What can it do?" Loki took it back – Mustang didn't sound quite so believing after all. Well, he could only hope for so much.

"I'm not positive, but I believe this one is the one known as the Mind Stone," he said, feeling a spike of trepidation over actually voicing it. This was a big gamble; depending on Mustang's reaction, this could go very well or end in Loki's incarceration (or, in a worst case scenario, as a pile of charcoal). "The giveaway is the iris color change, if that is indeed connected. The rest could be performed by any of the Stones, but the Mind Stone has the capability to alter the mind of those around it and bend them to the wielder's will. Anyone whose mind has been touched by the Stone will have blue eyes, often in an unnaturally bright shade."

"So all those officers are brainwashed?"

"In essence, yes. But that is only if I'm correct in connecting the eyes to the murders. I'd assumed the eye change was only myth until now. It's not a common enough threat to establish a rapport of sorts."

"Your confidence is inspiring." Mustang's voice was dripping with doubt.

"I didn't say I was an expert," Loki snapped. "It was a subject of interest when I was younger, but so much of it was just conjecture. Most of those stones were lost ages ago."

"I thought you said you lost your memory."

"I _said_ it was complicated."

"All right, all right. Keep going."

Loki folded his arms over his chest. "I think it is on high time you fulfilled some of _your_ end of the bargain."

"In a few days, maybe."

" _What_?" He shot to his feet. "After all that, you're going to make me leave with nothing?"

Mustang rolled his eyes. "You're underestimating the amount of work I'll have to put into this," he said dryly. "I can't talk too much without risking confidential information, and it can't be a surprise to you that I don't exactly trust you. If it means anything, I'm pretty sure you believe most of what you told me, but I need a little more time before I could say the same. Come back in three days, same time, and if I think what you've been claiming has some merit, I'll see what I can do. Besides, I'm already meeting part of the deal by not arresting you."

Loki would take great pleasure in slaying this man, if the chance ever arose. "I do hope you'll refrain from letting me down," he said, levelling Mustang with a cool stare.

"Mhmm. See you in three days, Mr. Laufeyson."

* * *

Madame Christmas took one look at Loki that evening and relegated him to cleaning duty, away from any customers they might get. He was seething and didn't make much of an effort to hide it. It had been way more exhausting than he'd expected to try to negotiate with Mustang, enough so he wondered if it had even been worth it. He hadn't gotten nearly enough out of the whole encounter.

Loki had thought himself prepared. He'd been to and participated in negotiations a few times in Asgard and it had rarely been difficult, yet here he'd been left behind, and by a mere mortal no less. He never would have heard the end of it if Thor's companions had been here.

Somehow, though, the lesser status he'd appointed to mortals no longer seemed so accurate. Their lives were short, only a small fraction of the lifespan Asgardians looked forward to, yet their potential for growth was so much greater than he would have anticipated. There was little wasted time in their choices and their ability to adapt was impressive. He would have to take another look at Midgard once he escaped this world – he may have judged them a little too quickly.

Despite it all, Loki had no qualms in admitting to a grudging respect of the general. Asgard valued strength and power above all else. Their position above the Nine Realms had hardly come through negotiation and amity, as much as Odin claimed to love peace; he'd heard of the brutality of Asgardian forces in the whispers of other realms (and, of course, in the All-Father's hidden texts – did he really think Loki would not find them?). There was a layer of resentment even in the more cordial realms, dampened by millennium but still lingering under the surface. In that regard, Amestris did not seem so different; the nation had been built on war and bloodshed, history written by the victors.

However, everything he'd heard of the country's most recent head, Fuhrer Grumman, told of a drastic change in leadership style. He seemed a cunning man, yet his focus was on education, in innovation and in cultivating amity with its current neighbors rather than continuing tradition and stamping them into the ground under the guise of unavoidable warfare. And Mustang's values, according to the news publications, ran along similar lines. He was looking to make change without using his considerable power to force it.

And it seemed to be working, so Loki couldn't really scoff too much at their idealism. Maybe it was simply that their approach differed from his father's Odin's, but it seemed much more worthy of respect. It certainly did make things easier to have the masses on your side.

He had to get his hands on that Stone. He could accomplish nearly anything with it in his possession; he was the only one in this world who knew even a fraction of its full potential. Mustang and anyone else who would dare oppose him would pay, respect be damned. It was almost certainly in a container at the moment to help harness its power – it would undoubtedly tear apart whatever hapless human that was stupid enough to touch it barehanded – but that meant it was likely operating at limited potential. Loki was a _god_ , not one so easily destroyed by a relic, powerful as it may be. If Mustang refused to tell him what Loki wanted to know he could use the Stone to demand the information.

Not to mention Truth had offered the return of Loki's magic in exchange for the Stone, if Loki was willing to give it up.

He had the benefit of knowledge, here. Mustang thought he was coming out ahead, and in the short term he was. Immensely frustrating as his current situation might be, Loki could play the long game, and he _would_ come out on top, one way or another.

His pride was feeling rather sore at the moment, though.

"You missed a spot," Madame Christmas said from the doorway, breaking him out of his thoughts. He glanced at the floor he'd been mopping, noticed the bed was in the way of her line of sight and raised an eyebrow.

"There is no way you could tell from over there," he said, dropping the mop into the bucket of water. Some of it splashed out, soaking his shoes, and he resisted the urge to just kick the pail over and be done with it.

"You're sulkin' over something, Turncoat," she said. "And you make mistakes when you get all pissy. Don't go pretending it ain't true."

Loki sighed, glaring at her without any real heat. Apparently taking this as an invitation to continue, she shut the door and held out one of two bottles of beer to him.

"Take this, it'll loosen you up a little. God knows you could stand to lose some of that stick-up-your-ass attitude," she said. He scoffed but accepted the bottle, cracking it open and taking a deep draught. "So, spill."

"What do you care?" he asked bitterly, more rhetorical than anything, already knowing the answer – she didn't. No one did. Even back in Asgard, only his mother had ever truly seemed to love him, while the rest simply tolerated him due to his title or attempted to use him. It wasn't even just his tricks and schemes; he'd heard what they whispered when they thought he could not hear them. _Ugly. Cheater. Womanly. An embarrassment to the royal family_.

Thor had meant well, but he had been too blinded by his own arrogance to notice the cracks in their relationship. Loki missed Frigga terribly. Nearly all his fond memories involved her to some degree, and it burned to know she would never hear his side of the story, forever left with the belief that he'd become a traitor who'd attempted to kill both his 'father' and brother. More than anything else he wished he'd had the chance to apologize to her.

"I care that you're not workin' properly, bucko." The Madame took a sip of her own drink. "'Sides, you've grown on me the last couple'a months."

"You still believe I'm a spy."

"Yeah, right. I know what a spy looks like, boy, and you ain't one of 'em," she said with a chuckle. "You're easier to read than you think. Don't give me that look, you're transparent as a window when you think no one's watchin'."

Loki stared at his drink. He didn't really believe her earlier claim that she cared, but it was a nice sentiment. Was he really so attention-starved that he would cling to words he knew weren't true? "I saw a body yesterday," he said before he could stop himself. It must have been the alcohol.

Madame Christmas raised her eyebrows. "Someone you knew?"

"No, I – " he stopped, his mouth dry, and he took another drink. "It was a child. Just left out in the street like rubbish." That could have been him, once upon a time, an infant left to die in a frozen palace.

"And that's life," the woman said, and Loki snapped his gaze to hers. Her tone was callous, but her fingers were clenched tightly around her beer. "People die, sometimes it's kids, and it's damn sad. Were you the one who killed him?"

"No, I was not," he hissed, slamming his bottle down on a nightstand. Any vulnerability he'd started to show clammed back up, the icy rage he'd grown so used to rearing back up with a vengeance. He shouldn't have said anything; people always assumed he was to blame.

"Then stop mopin' around," she said, completely ignoring his burst of anger. He drew back slightly, rage dimming into confusion as she continued. "You and I, we're livin' in the underbelly of society. We have to see things we wish we could unsee, but there ain't much we can do about that. I'm guessin' you haven't been in this way of life long. Somethin' happened to you sometime recently, I'm near certain, but I'm not gonna ask. We've all got our stories on how we got here and most of them ain't pretty, but they're ours to share or keep to ourselves."

"But what if I told you I could have prevented it?" Loki pressed. Later he'd blame this boldness on the beer he'd consumed. "I'm nearly certain I know what killed him. If I had put it together sooner – "

She snorted loudly and he furrowed his brow, torn between taking offense or questioning her entirely inappropriate response. She smirked, sensing his befuddlement. "You've got a heart after all, Mr. I-Care-For-No-One. Glad to know I didn't mislead my nephew."

"Your… what?" He was feeling incredibly slow on the uptake here.

She waved a hand in dismissal. "Don't worry about it. Seems to me like you'll get to know him pretty soon anyway."

* * *

Being "womanly" obviously isn't a bad thing, but from what I've seen of Asgardian culture (excluding some of the events in Thor: Ragnarok) it probably would have been a bit of an insult for an Asgardian man to be called such. Just a heads up on that word choice.


	8. Chapter 8

"So, what you're telling me is some crackpot came in here and spouted off about some weird legend from Creta – and I'll tell you right now I never heard of anything like that while I was there – and you _believed_ him?" And here was a new reason Ed could add to the list of 'Why he never should have left Resembool.' Sure, reality had a habit of being stranger than fiction, but in all the time Ed had spent in Creta he'd never heard of something called an _Infinity Stone_. Even the name sounded stupid. Who the hell chose that name? It was completely unscientific; there was no such thing as an infinite power source. "What, does the military make a habit of listening to nutcases or is this a new development?"

"Do you really think so little of me?" Roy asked, sounding tired. For that matter, he looked way more tired than Ed had seen in a long time too, and that was saying something considering all the weird things happening around Central lately. It had really upped the ante of Roy's already taxing schedule, and this was just one more thing being thrown on top of it all. Now he was attracting the weirdos, too.

Ever since that bizarro case he'd asked Ed and Al to take a look at, it felt kind of like they'd accidentally ended up in some sort of alternate dimension where stuff that shouldn't be possible kept happening. Case point number one: the sudden influx of blue eyes in people that didn't have blue eyes the day before.

Al thought the phenomenon was fascinating, of course. Public opinion was a little more mixed, and Ed still wasn't sure where he stood on it. There hadn't really been any evidence suggesting it was dangerous, but the unnaturalness of the situation creeped him out. Roy seemed pretty apprehensive but hadn't said much about it, probably because the military was keeping tabs on the situation and he was therefore bound to some level of secrecy.

When exactly his and Roy's friendship had gotten to a first-name basis Ed wasn't sure. Probably sometime not too long after they'd benched that investigation on the human transmutation array, which had ended up going fucking nowhere. Thank Truth they'd at least gotten some monetary compensation for that ordeal (Ed and Al had been listed as official alchemic consultants, which came with a pretty awesome pay rate if they ever helped out), even if they never figured out what had happened in that basement.

And soon he was going to be making a regular salary, with a job that would allow him to keep going with his research and hopefully steer gifted alchemists in the right direction, warn them against making the mistakes he had. It had come as a massive fucking shock when he, _Edward Elric_ , eighteen years old and lacking a formal schooling degree, had been asked to join the staffing of the soon-to-open Central University as a _professor_. Hell, half the students would probably be older than him. Teaching was never something he'd envisioned for himself, but come on – he'd be out of his mind to give up this chance, especially when he had no plans for his future and nothing concrete to work towards.

He was pretty sure Roy had played a part somewhere in there in getting them to consider Ed, but he wasn't going to ask.

 _I think pretty damn highly of you_ , Ed wanted to say to Roy. "I spent seven months in Creta," he said instead, "and I've never heard of anything like these so-called Infinity Stones."

"Well, do you want me to ignore everything he said just because it sounds far-fetched?" Roy said, and Ed already knew what the general was going to say even before he voiced it. "One of the reasons – a minor one, granted – we didn't tell the truth about the Promised Day was because it was so unbelievable to anyone who hadn't seen it for themselves. It still feels like some twisted nightmare to me most of the time, not like reality. I don't know about you, but I'm willing to consider even the most unlikely leads if it means we have a chance of saving civilian lives."

Ed heaved out a sigh, flopping into the chair across from Roy's. "You at least checked out who this guy was, right? Make sure he's not some madhouse escapee?"

"Of course I did," Roy said, sounding affronted. "There wasn't anything in the military records, not that I expected to find something there, but I did find a few people in my contacts who'd heard of Laufeyson."

"And?"

"The earliest any of them remembered knowing about him was around five, six weeks ago. It's possible he's been around longer, but he hadn't drawn any attention to himself before then if that's the case," Roy said, steepling his fingers.

"He sounds like a pretty shady guy from what you've told me," Ed said. "Hell, isn't that around the time these murders started? How do we know _he's_ not the killer and just playing us?"

"I'm definitely not ignoring that possibility," Roy said. "Most of them described him as a loner with a strong case of arrogance, after all. But someone I trust vouched for him. Said he didn't seem malicious, at the very least."

"It's a pretty big jump from 'not malicious' to trustworthy," Ed said disbelievingly.

"Oh, he's absolutely not trustworthy. But I'm inclined to at least listen to him, because at least one part of his story does check out."

"What part is that?"

"Based on Laufeyson's suggestion, I requested that any soldiers whose eyes recently turned blue undergo a more extensive mental examination. Most of them outright refused, even against direct orders. A couple of them spouted off about 'their eyes having been opened' or something equally weird. We've put them on probation for now."

Ed tapped his fingers against his automail leg in thought. "That doesn't mean they're connected to the murders. I don't exactly trust the military, but come on, someone should have noticed by now if military officers were blasting holes in civilians."

"There's some evidence suggesting most of the bodies were dumped on the streets post mortem, so I doubt it would be so obvious," Roy said. "Look, I'm not asking you to go stage some big investigation. I'd really prefer it if you didn't, to be honest; I was just hoping you'd be willing to be here when he shows up. You've had more interactions with Truth than I have, and I need him to keep talking. I highly doubt he's going to give me anything more without answering some of his questions, and if we're lucky you might be able to figure out _why_ he wants to know more about Truth, too. There are a lot of things here that just don't make sense."

* * *

It may not have been intentional, but Loki's job was turning out to be far more useful than just as a source of income.

Once he began listening for it, he found quite a few patrons of the bar had information he doubted was in the hands of the military. One of them had actually seen one of the corpses dropped off by a group of three; he'd then come to the bar, downed twelve shots and passed out in the restroom. It was a shame the man hadn't remembered if they were in military uniform. Loki would have been able to make a more concrete connection between the incident and the likelihood the Stone was in the hands of a military official.

That was one of the benefits of staying close to the sketchier parts of society. It had been the same back in Asgard, where his contacts with Asgard's underworld granted him knowledge not commonly held by a member of the royal family. Quite a few of those hidden passageways would remain hidden from nobles because they simply did not know who to ask, much less where to look.

Tradition took precedence over innovation, knowledge and understanding ignored in favor of epic ventures deemed worthy of making history. It had always made Loki scoff, seeing the library so often overlooked because no one cared to learn _how_ their precious relics and technology operated. In another life, Loki would have liked to become better acquainted with Heimdall, one of the few who took the time to learn and be trusted with the how behind the Bifrost. It was a pity he was so (rightfully) suspicious of Loki.

The Asgardians were not generally stupid, after all. There was so much potential within their long lives to become truly formidable both in strength and in knowledge, yet the latter was all too often ignored in favor of the former. Their lives moved slowly and change even more slowly. With time, Loki was sure he could have shown Thor the widespread benefits of mastery in more than matters of war. Granted, he had sort of burned that bridge when he put into motion that (rather convoluted, he'd admit now) plan to win Odin's approval and 'kill' (teach him a lesson, more like) Thor. To be fair, he hadn't actually expected Thor to die, though he told himself he wouldn't care either way. They were all as good as dead to Loki anyway.

Madame Christmas seemed to be taking an interest in the whole debacle surrounding the murders, too. More than once Loki had overheard her muttering about the state of the country and how she was tempted to never ignore even the weirdest conspiracy theories after the last one, but when he asked about it she wouldn't give him any details.

It wasn't the first time he'd heard of the strangeness from two years earlier. It was difficult to find much more than the official story – or rather, it was difficult to find anyone who knew and was willing to tell anything more than the official story.

Supposedly, then-Colonel Mustang and General Armstrong had discovered a plan in the upper ranks of the military to perform an alchemic experiment, one that would cause great harm to the general populace. Some of the perpetrators had died during the fight and Generals Klemin and Edison were arrested and convicted of treason. The Fuhrer had died protecting his country from the corrupted generals.

Yet the details were hazy, and sometimes contradicted each other. Some people seemed to believe the former Fuhrer had actually been working _with_ the convicted generals, and no one knew what the so-called experiment was even intended to do.

"I still have nightmares sometimes," one patron confided sometime after his fourth or fifth shot. Mortals got drunk so easily, and Loki was often who they talked to (as the bartender; the girls told him this was normal, but every time he was astounded by how many secrets were just put out there like they were nothing once they'd had a drink or two) even if he rarely even bothered responding to their blabbering. Silence was apparently not a deterrent. "And it's like I'm back in that place forgetting who I am through all that pain. It was so bad I forgot who I was while it was going on. Seriously, it was the worst feeling of my life, and I know I'm not crazy, because my whole family had that same dream. Do you think I'm crazy? Sometimes I think I'm crazy, but I can't be because…" and at that point Loki tuned him out because the man's essentially said the same thing four times now. He'd hardly even acknowledged the drunkard's presence, he shouldn't be subject to this torture.

Still, he'd filed the man's words away for another time, just in case. This world's culture was based in strict math and equations, with an off-kilter undertone that left him feeling unsettled every time he came across it. There was no telling when one of these drunkard mortals may have some valuable information.

The officer at the front knew Loki was coming this time. An escort, one with a gun, still accompanied him on the way up; the wary looks he was receiving suggested Mustang had warned them to be cautious regarding him. Smart man. The general wasn't aware of it, but Loki _did_ have a rather extensive track record of stabbing people in the back – sometimes literally.

There was another man in Mustang's office, and oh _,_ this one was very young. Loki wasn't familiar enough with the scale of human lifespans (it was, what… one, two hundred years? Something very insignificant) to guess by years, but he was either at the tail end of or recently finished his adolescence. He wasn't military either, going by his casual clothing and posture. Hair even more golden than Thor's was pulled back in a loose ponytail and he was sporting a glare that might have intimidated someone other than Loki.

He actually looked remarkably like Thor had when they were younger, if a little more compact. His impression of the man soured slightly at the thought.

"Laufeyson," Mustang greeted, and the newcomer seemed to take that as a cue to sit on the edge of the desk, still watching Loki with a heavy air of suspicion. Mustang rolled his eyes but didn't say anything. They were friends, then, and likely very good ones. Loki sat as well, though in an actual chair because he wasn't a heathen, thank you.

"I expect you've done some investigating," Loki said, skipping the formalities. Mustang didn't react aside from a nod of agreement, though the younger man seemed vaguely amused.

"Of course," he said, then gestured to the man. "This is Edward Elric, the retired Fullmetal Alchemist."

Retired? That seemed far-fetched. A more thorough survey only served to bolster Loki's original assessment – this was a very young man, not one who should have been anywhere near retirement. From what he'd read, most alchemists with a title like the one given here were State Alchemists, which meant Elric was essentially ex-military.

Now that he thought about it, he realized he recognized the moniker. The Fullmetal Alchemist… he had been referenced in older news publications as the youngest State Alchemist ever, joining at the age of twelve (which, even putting it in terms of human age, was incredibly young; when Loki was twelve he'd still been little more than a toddler). Edward Elric was a bona fide genius, though Loki never would have guessed just looking at the man sitting on the edge of a general's desk with obvious disdain.

"I assume he's here for a reason," Loki said. Elric bristled at Loki's dismissive tone.

"Yeah, I'm here because you said you've passed through the Gate and met Truth," Elric said, his voice holding the notes of a challenge. "And I'm not sure I believe it. So, prove it."

* * *

And now Ed and Loki have finally met! Fun times are coming up. And by fun, I mean the "putting two volatile substances next to each other and waiting to see how they'll react" kind of fun.


	9. Chapter 9

"I'm here because you said you've passed through the Gate and met Truth," Elric said, his gaze challenging. "So, prove it."

"I am not entirely certain how you wish for me to do so," Loki said, his brow furrowing. "Are you looking for a physical description of Truth?"

"No, dipshit, I want you to perform alchemy without a transmutation circle," Elric snapped, crossing his arms over his chest.

Well, that would explain why Loki hadn't come across any mention of individuals performing alchemy without an array like he had been. What an oversight. He hadn't really performed all that many transmutations in public, but for anyone who knew what to look for he'd been giving himself away for quite some time now.

"You could have just said so," Loki sniffed, pressing his hands together and pressing them onto the surface of the desk. It dipped under his palms as the wood reformed into a detailed replica of his once-prized helmet, horns gracefully curving up as the pair of alchemists watched. By Valhalla, Loki missed that elegant craftsmanship. He'd gotten quite good at transmuting after a few attempts, if he was being honest – and _please_ , Loki rarely did any work that wasn't good. He wasn't unwilling to acknowledge his arrogance, and he had talent to back it up. Elric's face was twisted in an odd grimace, like he couldn't decide whether to grin or keep glaring.

"I'll give you points for style," Elric said, as if that was some great concession. Some of the instinctive dislike of Elric faded. _Finally_ , someone else with a decent sense of style. Loki had been somewhat afraid he'd never find someone in this godforsaken world with even a moderate amount of flair, and at this point he'd take what he could get.

"I presume you've met Truth as well, then," Loki said. Elric hesitated, glancing at Mustang who inclined his head almost imperceptibly, before nodding.

"Yeah, a few times," he said. Loki shifted forward in undisguised interest. This was even better than he'd hoped for – here was someone who had actually returned to Truth after the initial visit and came out looking relatively unscathed.

"So you know how to return there again," Loki said. "How?"

His query obviously put Elric on edge, as the young man stiffened and his frown deepened. "Why the hell would you want to go back? Besides, you should know how already – you've been there before."

Loki exhaled harshly, pinching the bridge of his nose in annoyance. He'd gathered from his last meeting with Mustang that the ordinary method of encountering Truth involved attempted human transmutation, but without the actual circle that knowledge wasn't of much use. Elric's response didn't make all that much sense, anyway; Elric had openly admitted _he'd_ returned, so it was very hypocritical to dismiss the possibility Loki had a good reason for wishing to see Truth again.

"Is there no other method than human transmutation?" he asked.

"You're an idiot if you're serious about going back," Elric snapped.

Loki bristled, any good will he'd felt towards the man dissipating. "I'm hardly going to change my mind because a boy playing at being a man tells me to."

Elric was on his feet in an instant. For a moment, Loki wondered with mild amusement if he was going to get punched. Mustang reached over and put a hand on Elric's arm, obviously not lightly going by Elric's grimace.

"You're talking out your ass, dickwad," Elric snarled, though he didn't make a move towards Loki despite the tension in his body. "I stopped being a kid when I was eleven. Who do you think you are? You don't know anything about me!"

Loki put on his best 'I'm Not Impressed' face. "Oh, yes, the classic 'tortured genius' play. What was it? Your parents didn't love you enough? Or did they die? Perhaps… both?" Elric was making a valiant effort to keep his expressions firmly in the zone of anger, but Loki hadn't received the nickname _God of Lies_ for nothing, and part of telling a good lie was being able to read the audience and its subconscious responses. It seemed Loki hadn't been so far off the mark with his guesses.

"Are you _trying_ to get me to punch you or –"

"Stop it, both of you," Mustang cut Elric off, his eye twitching. "I don't have time to sit here while you two bicker like children. Stand down, Fullmetal. Laufeyson, you're already on thin ice. You're really not helping your case here."

Elric glared viciously at Loki, and he offered a serene smile in return, knowing full well how angry it was going to make the younger man. Sure enough, he could almost _hear_ Elric's teeth grinding. Was he really supposed to be one of the smartest people in the nation? So much for underestimating humans; apparently he'd been _overestimating_ them if he was supposed to believe that. That temper of his was so much like Thor's, and the whole similar appearance part really wasn't helping. Though Thor was a lot taller and broader. One part of his mind was reprimanding Loki for already making enemies with a possible ally, but really, they shouldn't expect anything different. He'd been going soft lately; he needed to step up his game and keep himself in check. Besides, he wasn't about to sit there and just let them insult him, though in this case it would probably be more beneficial to ease up a little.

"That you haven't had me arrested or otherwise prevented me from entering the premises suggests you've found evidence supporting what I told you when we met last," Loki said, silently deferring to Mustang to avoid a full-scale fight and returning to the original topic. As much as he wanted to further poke at the wasp's nest of a man standing right in front of him, he _did_ have a purpose for being here that didn't involve antagonization. Mustang nodded and the hard lines of his shoulders relaxed slightly, and he shot another look at Elric as if to make sure things wouldn't re-escalate.

"You were right. The soldiers who've recently had an eye color change acted strangely when we asked them to come in for a more extensive mental assessment," Mustang said. Loki hid a pleased smirk. The general was good at putting up a front of disinterest and skepticism, but he wouldn't have requested psychological assessments if he wasn't at least willing to consider what Loki had told him.

"Did you find anything about the Stone itself?"

"No," Mustang said. "We don't even know what it looks like. I was hoping you might be able to tell us. Have you found anything more on your side?"

"I'm afraid not, General. Even if I had, I wouldn't tell you just yet." Loki smiled. "I believe you owe me some information now. You yourself admitted some merit to my words, and so far both you and Elric have been less than forthcoming on your end of the bargain."

"I never agreed to that deal, mister try-hard," Elric said. "But putting aside our little fight – because I'm a mature adult, unlike a certain guy in the room – I'll tell you how I met Truth if you'll tell me how you did. You seem kinda pretentious, but obviously you must have cared a lot about someone at some point, right?"

Loki had a feeling his tale wasn't quite what Elric was looking for, but it had the benefit of not offering them any advantageous information. There wasn't much to be done with the reality of the matter – that he'd regained consciousness within that white realm with only speculation as reasoning on how he'd gotten there. For a moment he considered telling the truth, that he'd in reality come from another world, but scrapped that idea almost as soon as it appeared. He was probably already stretching the limits of what they were willing to believe without adding dimensional travel on top of it.

"You first," Loki said after a pause. Elric looked at Mustang, who shrugged, causing the younger man to huff in annoyance.

"Fine. My mom died when I was a little kid and since our dad left before that, me and my brother were kind of on our own," Elric started. Loki nodded gravely as if he actually cared. "So we decided to try to bring her back using alchemy." Elric laughed bitterly. "I'm sure you know how that worked out for us. There's a good reason human transmutation is forbidden. Both me and my brother, Alphonse, went through the Gate and met Truth. He took my leg and Al's entire body, and I gave up my arm to bring Al's soul back and bonded him to a suit of armor."

Loki looked pointedly at Elric's uncovered hands, both of which looked quite undamaged. He'd heard the difference between Elric's legs when he'd jumped off the desk, so that part was believable enough, but from what he'd read of automail the replacements were obviously just that. Neither of those arms were automail.

" _Obviously_ I got the arm back," Elric said, rolling his eyes. The hope that had been slowly dying inside Loki flared up. It wasn't a fool's errand, then, to try to regain something taken by Truth. This near-child had figured it out – it should be simple for Loki to do the same, then.

"And how did you manage that?" Loki asked, doing his best to sound disinterested and failing. This was exactly what he'd been looking for.

"Al gave up his soul again to return it to me," Elric said shortly. That seemed like a poor trade to make, to give up one's soul just to give his brother an arm back (especially when automail seemed a very viable option), but there was obviously a lot of information being left out in this brief retelling. "Look, it's a long story. What about you?"

"I woke up there," Loki said, repeating what he'd told Mustang. Elric's disbelieving and annoyed expression was essentially the same as Mustang had given him the first time he'd said it.

"Yeah, right. You don't just 'wake up' in a place like that," Elric argued.

"Well, I did," Loki said, raising an eyebrow. "Surely there's more than one method to encounter Truth."

"I'll bet you just don't want to tell us. I told you mine, so grow the hell up and spill it."

"Are you so close-minded that you cannot even consider the possibility?" He was starting to get angry again. "You're just like my brother, idiotic and incapable of keeping their temper under check."

"Oh, fuck you too! I feel sorry for whoever had _you_ as their brother! You have no idea the kind of things I've seen – "

"Do you even believe Truth was real or was that too far outside what you're willing to acknowledge – "

" – he was almost tame compared to – "

" – I don't know why I ever thought I could get along with you _humans_ – "

" – Gluttony's stomach dimension was _way_ weirder – "

"Shut _up_ , both of you – "

" – don't know why I'm even bothering – hold on, _stomach dimension_?"

"What do you mean, _you humans_?"

Elric was glaring at him with a suspicious glint in his eyes, and Mustang was pinching the bridge of his nose and looked in dire need of a drink. Loki could use one too, but sadly it wasn't exactly an option at the moment.

"So, slick-dick, are you saying you're not human?" The glare shifted into something more dangerous, and Mustang's body language followed suit as he seemed to catch on to what Elric was insinuating, his gloved hands dropping to rest on the desk in front of him in a mock casual display. Alarm bells started going off in Loki's head; he needed to tread carefully here, or he had no doubt both of them would attack. "Are you a homunculus, then?"

Loki really wished he had a drink right now.


	10. Chapter 10

For the record, Loki did not even know homunculi ever existed in reality, and he wished to clarify that he was definitely not one of them.

(An artificial human created by humans? That was even worse than simply being human.)

Amestrian history books were very lacking in knowledge, apparently. Only alchemic theory ever mentioned them, and only in the abstract – because as far as the books were concerned, none had ever been created.

A supposed 'perfect being'. It had always sounded ridiculous to him, because there was no such thing as a perfect being. Asgardians were called gods, a word associated with perfection, but they were flawed. Loki liked to think himself above them, but he wasn't so arrogant as to believe he had none himself. Odin himself stood at the top of the Nine Realms as the All-Father, the father of all, the figurehead of mercy, a position won through death and bloodshed. History may have been written by the victors, but the subtext was easy enough to read for anyone willing to look just a little closer.

For heaven's sake, they hadn't even done that good of a job hiding the whole _megalomaniac older sister_ debacle. Really, it was like they'd _wanted_ him to figure it out, or Odin was just arrogant enough to believe no one would talk about it if he so commanded. Granted, there were very few people who seemed to admit to knowing that part of the truth now, but apparently Odin was too sentimental to destroy all the evidence.

For Valhalla's sake, there were still books in the library detailing the wars they'd started. Odin was a fool for believing they'd succeeded in rewriting history to fit his narrative, going so far as to erase the existence of his eldest daughter while keeping records of her life in the damn library.

He supposed something similar might happen to his own life, now that he was gone. His being, his accomplishments, everything he'd done buried and hidden away as if he'd never existed. At least Hela had been (as far as Loki was aware) Odin's flesh and blood child. Loki was a war prize. He had a feeling Odin wouldn't feel the need to keep any records of Loki.

The point was, there was no such thing as a perfect being, especially not if that life form was based off humanity. Their short lives were a very symptom of imperfection, if you asked him. It was best not to mess around with such concepts, as it rarely went well. Best to leave them as part of theory and not reality.

Loki was getting the feeling the homunculi were not just theoretical, and if he were to guess then he'd say they were much more dangerous than he would have assumed.

He was also fairly certain the Flame Alchemist would not have much trouble incinerating Loki on the spot if he so desired.

So, of course, Loki took the most natural course of action.

Prod at them further and see if they snapped.

To be fair, he was the literal God of Mischief. Really, he would be letting down his title if he didn't push things in the direction of chaos.

"What if I say I am?" he asked, crossing his legs in a mock-casual display of nonchalance. It wasn't like it mattered all that much; if they truly aimed to kill him, he doubted there was all that much he could do to stop them in his current state. If only he still had his godly body.

Neither of the men watching him seemed impressed – they'd gotten tenser, like they were expecting an attack at any second. Interesting. These homunculi were likely dangerous, then. Maybe they had something to do with that uprising two years earlier; there was certainly enough secrecy surrounding that time period to make it a plausible theory.

"Who sent you?" Mustang's tone no longer had any of that level indifference his voice had held nearly all the time Loki had known him, replaced by something a lot more formidable. This was the so-called Hero of Ishval coming out to play, wasn't it? It made Loki want to laugh. He sounded just like Heimdall, back when Loki had first discovered he could cloak himself from Heimdall's ever-watching eyes.

Elric had an almost haunted expression, like he was being faced by his mortal enemy. That seemed a little excessive considering Loki technically hadn't done anything yet, but then, it wasn't the first time Loki had been on the receiving end on that look.

"Who do you think sent me?" Loki replied, smirking. He was careful not to let his hands drift too close to each other, instead spreading them out with upturned palms, noting how both their eyes tracked his movements. It wouldn't do to get torched now, not when he was _so close_ to finding some pieces of the puzzle.

"That Father bastard is dead," Elric growled. "There's nothing left for you to fight for."

Loki's smile grew. Now they were getting somewhere. "Who told you he died?"

Elric's expression faltered, just slightly. His next statement was less confident. "I saw him die. We all did. We killed him." He narrowed his eyes. "Are you telling me he's still alive?"

"I'm not saying anything," Loki said. "Just questioning your recollection of events. Is he the one who drove your brother to do something so stupid as giving up his life for something as insignificant as your arm?"

Sharp pain exploded from the side of his face, the force of the punch enough to almost knock him out of the chair.

"You don't know a damn thing!" Elric yelled. He was seething, teeth grinding and breathing labored. Mustang was standing now, eyes narrowed as he studied Loki but not making any moves to attack. Loki lightly touched his cheek, a metallic taste seeping into his mouth where the skin in his mouth had gotten cut on his teeth. He smiled, and he could see the muscles in Elric's body tensing in preparation to strike out again.

"Edward, stop," Mustang said. "He's not a homunculus; he's been playing you. Look, he's not healing."

"Oh, you're no fun," Loki said, rolling his eyes as he settled back into his seat, the sting dulling into a deep ache. He was going to be feeling that for a while. Elric had a lot more strength than Loki would have guessed just by looking at him. "But this has been very intriguing. Really, if you wanted to keep the events of two years ago secret you should have covered it up better." The stricken look on Elric's face as good as confirmed some of Loki's suspicions.

Now, if he could just get Elric alone, it would make this so much easier. He got talkative when he was riled up, and Loki had plenty of practice in aggravating personalities like Elric's.

He couldn't get much from someone as careful and controlled as Mustang, but Elric was a gold mine of information just waiting to be tricked out of him.

* * *

Ed wanted to bash this guy's face in. Loki didn't look affected at all, even with the undoubtedly painful redness on his cheek.

Ed should have aimed for the nose. It would have been a lot harder to ignore.

Roy was side-eyeing him, but Ed ignored him, embarrassment red-hot in his chest as he replayed what he'd just accidentally spilled to Loki. Fuck, he should have been more careful. But something about this guy just rubbed him the wrong way, putting him on edge despite Ed's attempts to play nice.

Loki didn't know anything about Al. He didn't get it, and logically Ed knew he wouldn't understand without knowing the context behind Al's choice, but _hell_ if he was going to just stand by and listen to this crackpot spout off insults about his little brother like that.

He shouldn't have bothered. He shouldn't have told Loki anything about himself. That was a huge fucking mistake, and he could already hear Al asking him what he expected. Some solidarity, maybe? Come on, it only made sense Loki had cared about someone at some point, even if he was a class A jerk now. People didn't attempt human transmutation just for kicks, even if he was reconsidering that belief after meeting Loki. At this point he wouldn't have even believed the man had ever actually seen Truth if he hadn't seen him perform alchemy without an array, and later he'd think more about the possibility Loki was telling the truth about not performing human transmutation. He didn't like the implications.

"So who _is_ this Father person?" Loki asked, as if Ed was going to just give him all the answers now.

"It doesn't matter," Ed snapped. "Look, just tell us what we need to know about that stone and then get the hell out of here."

"And what is that so-called 'stomach dimension' you mentioned earlier? That sounds even more interesting," Loki said, continuing on as if Ed hadn't said anything.

Roy was giving Ed the stink eye. Well, if he complained later Ed would remind him that it was his own damn fault for asking Ed to meet the guy. Ed hadn't exactly jumped for joy at the prospect of meeting an arrogant dick like this guy.

"Fuck you," Ed hissed. Loki, of-fucking-course, looked like he thought that was funny, giving Ed a patronizing smile.

"How forward of you," he mocked, and Ed was _this_ close to socking him right in the teeth when he felt Roy put a hand on his shoulder again.

"Calm down," Roy said, quietly enough that only Ed could hear him. "This isn't helping anything." He jerked away from Roy's touch, but took a few steps away from both of them instead of giving into the urge to fight. He should leave. He'd never done well with the type of person that purposely tried to elicit a reaction, a.k.a. Loki's apparent default state, but he also didn't like the idea of leaving Roy alone with him. Even if Roy could more than handle himself.

"I don't know what you're expecting when you act like this, Laufeyson," Roy said, glaring at Loki. "You're undermining yourself with everything you're doing here."

"I wouldn't have to if you'd stop trying to cheat information out of me without offering anything useful in return," Loki said, that smug smile finally dropping off his face. Without it he just looked… tired. The side of his face was already discoloring into ugly shades of red and there were dark circles under his eyes, made much more obvious when he lost some of that arrogance.

"I'm hardly here out of any sense of goodwill, and I know you were aware of that when you told me to meet you here again," he continued. "I wish for the Stone to be found, and I wish to return it to Truth to regain what I lost. That is all I am here for. Without me, you will not find it easily, if at all. I suspect you may fall under its control before you've even realized what had happened. Without you, I will only be slowed down. I know what to look for, and my biggest obstacle is finding a way back to Truth to fulfill my goal. Either you help, or you do not. That is up to you. If you tell me to leave, I won't come back."

He leaned forward, and his icy gaze seemed to drop the temperature in the room a few degrees. "But rest assured, if trouble befalls you I _will not_ help. I will let you all rot under the control of someone who will manipulate you for their own gain, force you to kill and destroy what you love, and you will _rejoice_ in your own destruction because you are told you should. Consider this before you make a choice you will come to regret."

* * *

Wrath was a homunculus that didn't heal from his wounds like the other homunculi, but neither Ed nor Roy were involved in fights where Wrath actually got injured so they didn't think of this when considering Loki's lack of healing.

It has also been pointed out to me that Loki's use of alchemy (and clapping first to use it) should also have been a giveaway to Ed and Roy that Loki wasn't a homunculus. I've yet to decide if I want to edit this chapter to address that or just include it in later chapters. A reminder that this fic is set in the Brotherhood/manga universe, so the rules regarding homunculi (notably their inability to use alchemy in this situation) don't apply.

From now on, updates will be weekly, every Sunday.


	11. Chapter 11

(A/N: I'm posting this a couple days earlier than normal because I won't have access to the internet on Sunday. I figure no one will mind.)

"I can't believe you agreed to this," Ed hissed, turning the most spiteful glare he could manage under the circumstances onto Roy, who was slumped in his chair and idly rubbing his fingers together. "Great idea, let's not kick out the batshit insane _psycho_. Let's all be friends instead! I'm sure he'll be nice and respectful now that he's got what he wants. In fact, why don't we just hand over all our secrets? Got any plans to share that fire alchemy research with him along with all that classified information?"

"Enough," Roy growled. "What do you want me to do? Turn him loose and hope he doesn't cause more damage out there than he might if we're around to keep an eye on him?"

"Arrest him, then!" It wasn't a good solution, not really, but the idea of someone as unhinged as Loki wandering the streets sounded even worse.

"For what? Performing human transmutation?" Roy raised his eyebrows, giving Ed a pointed look. "I technically don't have any proof he did even if I did arrest him, especially not without admitting both of us are guilty of the same thing."

"You don't count," Ed said bitterly. "You shouldn't talk like you made the same mistake I did. Fuck. I hate this. I thought we were done with this crazy shit when the homunculi and Father all died, and now we have to deal with some sort of mind-controlling stone? And it's already taken over part of the fucking military?"

The nightmares he already had were bad enough. Father being absorbed into himself, a horrifying, screaming wail with black spindly arms reaching around and distorting until nothing was left. Blindingly hot pain and a terrifying numbness with a steel beam impaling his side. Al's empty armor, the blood seal damaged. Mom, grotesque and taking one last rattling breath.

Truth, smiling with unnatural features, speaking with Ed's voice and reminding him who set him and Al on that path in the first place.

They weren't a nightly occurrence, thank Truth, not anymore. He'd had more than enough of waking up with screams stuck in his throat, thank you very much. He didn't relish adding mind control to the list, of all things. Bad enough that he'd made his own bad decisions; the idea that his mind could be twisted to someone else's beck and call somehow seemed even worse.

That was, if it was even true. They still didn't have any definite proof, even if most of Loki's claims had been supported by what they were finding from those attempted psychological exams. Only one thing stuck out as definitely false to Ed, and that was Loki's supposed origin. There was no way that guy was Cretan, and it was doubtful he'd ever even been to Creta. That accent was completely different from anything he'd heard over there, but then, it was different than anything he'd ever heard in his lifetime. He probably wasn't from any of the countries bordering Amestris, so how he'd ended up here was a mystery.

"I'm not forcing you to stay," Roy said. "You're free to leave at any time. I'd prefer you stuck around, of course, but that's up to you. I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to go. You're not a part of the military and you're under no obligation to us."

"Aw, I knew you cared," Ed said with a teasing grin, trying and failing to lighten the mood. He sobered again. "I don't think I could live with myself if I left just because I didn't want to deal with this, not when people are dying. When _kids_ are dying." He clenched his right hand into a fist, reveling in the sensation of nails biting into skin, in the ability to _feel_ in that hand again. He cared fuck-all what Loki thought of Al's sacrifice – it was damn good to have his arm back. "I may not be able to do alchemy anymore, but I'm sure as hell not down for the count."

Roy smiled. "I thought you might say that. Though I hope you'll keep yourself from punching our allies, tentative as they might be, from here on out. There's too much paperwork involved if it escalates."

"Fuck you too," Ed scoffed. "I saw your fingers. There's no way you weren't tempted to set his hair on fire or something. Even if it was my head you wanted to torch by the end of it."

Roy shrugged, tossing his now discarded gloves onto the desk. "Lucky for the rest of you, I have a lot of experience in impulse control."

"Sometimes you're too cautious. Come on, he totally had it coming. I'm shocked you didn't turn someone like him away the first time."

"To be honest, I think half of his behavior today was because I controlled the conversation the first time and pissed him off," Roy said. "I'd rather turn him loose and not have to deal with him, but he could be useful, especially if what he's said so far turns out to be true. I'd be very surprised if he didn't already know how to counter whatever effects that stone has on people and just 'neglected' to mention it to us. He's making sure he stays valuable, and if there really is such a thing as a Mind Stone out there, then it's working."

"As long as he doesn't hurt us in the process," Ed said. "There's no way he'd actually help us if it didn't help himself. I dunno, maybe Al will know how to get more out of him. People like Al most of the time. Well, if he decides to help out – that's up to him." And if he decided not to, then he hoped Loki never learned Al was actually still alive and around.

What if Loki ran into Al? It was really obvious to pretty much everyone that he and Ed were brothers, what with the unusual hair color and their other similar features, and Loki would definitely notice if he saw Al. He wouldn't put it past that sort of guy to try to use someone as friendly as his brother was to their advantage, but if Ed warned Al he would know to be careful –

Except Al had chosen to wait for Ed outside of Central Command.

And Loki had just left, probably through the main entrance where Ed had entered.

And as far as either of them had known before Ed had actually talked to Roy, they were meeting a potential ally, not a manipulative lunatic.

Fuck.

Either Elric had a third brother he hadn't mentioned, or Loki had been incorrect in his assumption this 'Alphonse' was dead.

There was a boy on the cusp of manhood speaking at the desk, that golden hair a dead giveaway on top of a facial structure similar to Elric's. As Loki watched, the boy waved in farewell and started to leave.

Loki, naturally, was not about to let this opportunity slip past him.

He really did hope Elric (he supposed he'd have to start referring to him as Edward, if he didn't wish to get himself confused) hadn't attempted to keep Alphonse's living status a secret, if this was indeed Alphonse, not when it was so glaringly obvious this boy was related to him. Well, only one way to find out.

"Alphonse Elric?"

The boy turned, eyeing Loki with clear interest and obviously zeroing in on the bruise on Loki's cheek before pointedly ignoring it, likely out of some sense of politeness. He laughed lightly. "Yeah? Sorry, I'm not sure I really recognize you…?"

"Right, I apologize," Loki said, easily adopting a semi-sheepish smile. "I'm Loki Laufeyson, the one Edward and General Mustang met with. Edward told me a little about you, and I couldn't resist the chance to say hello." He held out a hand, a custom he'd long ago realized was very common in this world, and Alphonse easily took it. He didn't look like he was suspicious of Loki, instead eyeing him curiously and almost apologetically. So he hadn't yet been warned to be wary of Loki, then. That was good.

"I'm guessing Ed's the one who gave you that bruise," he said, gesturing at Loki's face. Loki chuckled, glancing at the ground as if embarrassed.

"I did have it coming," he admitted, still smiling self-deprecatingly.

"Did you call him short or something?" Alphonse asked. "You're awfully tall, so I bet most people look short to you."

"Something like that," he said with a nod. Edward hadn't been _that_ much shorter than average, but apparently it was a trigger of his if Alphonse's assumption was anything to go by. It was better than the truth behind the provocation at least. "Are you leaving? Edward said you were waiting out here for him, but I'm sure he would understand if you left early. He _was_ planning on staying a while longer, he said he had quite a bit to discuss with the general," Loki said. He'd wager it was true, too; they had dismissed him rather unceremoniously and hadn't given any indication Edward intended to leave yet.

"I thought so," Alphonse agreed. "They've become pretty good friends recently. It's nice to see brother's mood improving again. He's been kind of down lately. I've just been getting hungry, so I figured I'd go get something to eat. I left a message for him so he wouldn't worry."

"Mind if I join you? I'm still learning what's good around here, and I would love the company." Alphonse could turn out to be an excellent source of information, if Loki was successful in remaining credible. He really only had the one shot at it, too; undoubtedly Alphonse's opinion of him would change the moment Edward had the chance to speak with the boy.

"Sure," Alphonse said, and they started walking away from Central Command. "You're new to Central, then? Where are you from?"

"Creta," Loki said, the lie coming automatically by now. There were a great many people curious about Loki's accent, and it seemed he was correct in believing most Amestrians knew very little about Creta – at least not enough to call him out on it. "I arrived here a few months ago."

"That's so cool," Alphonse said, grinning. "Brother just came back from Creta around a year ago, but he probably already told you that. He liked it a lot over there, said the food was _great_."

Inwardly, Loki froze. This ruse was not going to be so easy, not now that someone actually knowledgeable about the country was around. Had Mustang told Edward about Loki's heritage claim? Neither of them had mentioned it, but at this point it was really only a matter of time before he was called out on his lie. He reconsidered just how likely they would be to believe his true origin, because at this rate they may back him into a corner on that front.

"Yes, the food is very good," Loki agreed neutrally, hoping to Hel and back Alphonse did not know too many details himself.

Either he didn't or he wasn't looking to ask much about Loki's supposed home country, because he moved onto other subjects from there fairly quickly. It was rapidly becoming clear that Alphonse was a talker, chatting on about all sorts of things as they ordered some food at a Xingese restaurant and sat down, almost none of them of any importance. It was difficult to tell if this was intentional; despite Al's seemingly open demeanor he was surprisingly difficult to get a read on.

"You got any family waiting for you back home?" Alphonse asked innocuously enough. Loki shrugged, keeping most of his answers intentionally vague.

"I have a mother and brother," he said, debating how much he should say. Alphonse was easy to talk with, friendly and with an unjudging air about him. The lingering innocence of childhood, he might have thought, if he didn't know some of what had befallen Alphonse and his elder brother. "I doubt they wait for me, though. I believe they think me dead."

"What?" Alphonse looked alarmed. "Why would they think that?"

"I fell," Loki said, "off a… bridge, some time ago. I did not exactly intend to come to Amestris, but I woke up here, despite what I was sure was a fatal drop. And no, I am not quite sure what happened." It was a little more of the truth than he might have originally meant to say, even censored as it was, but it was a bit of a relief to get even a little of it out there. In the event he needed to come out with the truth of his origin (which with luck would never come to pass) then it would lend an air of credibility to begin seeding some of the facts ahead of time.

"Wow," Alphonse breathed. "That's terrible. Why haven't you gone back to Creta? They must be really upset."

"I doubt that," Loki said wryly. "We were all having a bit of a spat at the time."

"Families fight all the time," Alphonse said, his conviction clear in his gaze. "That doesn't mean they don't love you."

"I suppose," Loki said, not at all convinced and not really trying to disguise it. To be fair, he _was_ significantly understating the facts. He couldn't exactly come out and say ' _actually, I betrayed my country and allowed enemy troops into our weapons vaults to delay my brother's coronation, mistakenly getting him exiled after he retaliated with bloodshed, and then tried to kill him all the while orchestrating an assassination attempt on my so-called father so I could rescue him and earn his favor. Oh, and I also discovered I was adopted, a stolen relic from the realm of monsters, so most of my life had been naught but a lie, and proceeded to attempt to destroy an entire realm in my anger! It was only a family squabble, nothing serious. I'm sure they would_ love _to have me back._ Not

The longer this ordeal went on, the more certain Loki became that he could not just return to Asgard, even if he knew it would be without serious consequence. There was so much outside of the realm to see and learn about, and it would simply be foolish to limit himself only to the information available in the libraries of the palace. If he'd learned anything from his time here, it was the sheer amount of knowledge he had been missing out on thus far. The only thing he was truly interested in returning to was his mother, anyway; Thor, maybe, if the oaf had finally learned some humility and temperance in his exile. Loki hadn't been around long enough to be able to tell for certain.

"It's good you and your brother get along so well, especially when you two seem so different," Loki said, breaking the short spell of silence. Alphonse glanced up from his food with a grin.

"We've always been really close," Alphonse said. "He's a little hotheaded, but I promise he's a good guy. I'm guessing you just pushed some of his buttons."

Loki's lips twisted in amusement. Alphonse had no idea. "I'm not the most tactful person ever, you'll come to find. He was already on edge after sharing some of the details of your human transmutation attempt."

Alphonse's expression faltered slightly before recovering, if a bit more glum than before. "Oh, yeah. I'm surprised he actually mentioned it to you, I'm sure you get why we try not to spread that around."

"I've seen Truth as well," Loki said. It did not really matter if Alphonse was aware of that fact; he would learn it soon enough anyway. With luck it would establish a sense of camaraderie within the boy like it had with Edward. Before Loki had taunted away any sort of amity, of course. "You two must have really missed your mother. I'm very sorry for your loss, it must have been difficult at such a young age."

"She was a great woman," Alphonse said wistfully. "I don't remember her as much as I wish I did. Who… uh, if you don't mind me asking, who were you trying to bring back?" He looked (almost endearingly, Loki's traitorous brain supplied) embarrassed at his question.

Loki hesitated, not totally sure what he should respond with. He wanted to stay consistent; spinning too many lies and telling different stories to people (especially when they knew each other, like the general and the Elrics did) would probably come back to bite him, but it seemed obvious none of these mortals had heard of any other methods to meet Truth than human transmutation. Both Mustang and Edward had viewed Loki with suspicion the moment Loki had claimed otherwise, which in hindsight had been a mistake, but he could hardly be blamed for not knowing at the time.

Consistency won out in the end, of course.

"No one," Loki said, as if it was some great confession (and it was, as he'd come to learn from his last couple attempts to claim this). Sure enough, Alphonse's eyebrows drew together, and he was clearly confused for a few moments before a look of understanding seemed to come into his gaze.

"So you were forced through? Who did it? When was this?" Alphonse's eyes widened. "Is it connected to all these poor people who've been dying lately?"

Loki had to give the younger Elric credit – he was taking this far more in stride than either of the others had. It was a bit of a relief to not immediately face suspicion. "I don't know who, but it was a few months ago," Loki said. "Between the time where I fell and when I woke up in Amestris. Why, do you know how that's possible? I feared no one would believe me. Please, if you know something, tell me." He put on the most sincere, pleading expression he had in his arsenal. He only had this one chance to get information from Alphonse before he was warned by his elder brother, and Loki was _not_ going to let it pass him by.

"I've only heard of it happening once, and there was a really high cost for doing it. It used up most of a Philosopher's Stone, one of the really powerful ones. You know something about the murders, right? That's why you're meeting with the general and brother. Do you know who's doing it? Are they making new Philosopher's Stones?"

So he knew of the existence of Philosopher's Stones as well, then, and more than likely had encountered them firsthand. If he was reading this correctly, death was involved in the creation of these stones. It wasn't all that surprising; the cost of creating something so supposedly powerful under the incredibly strict equivalency laws in this world would have to be obscenely high.

"I'm certain your brother will fill you in," Loki said, mostly to avoid having to explain it all again. It was a pain to go through everything he'd decided to tell them, especially if it wasn't necessary. Alphonse didn't look too put out, but then, he seemed to be a remarkably tranquil person most of the time.

The meal now finished (Loki had hardly tasted it, distracted as he was by the conversation), Alphonse pushed his chair back, standing up and glancing towards the door before turning back to Loki with a smile.

"I'm sure he will. Anyway, thanks so much for cooperating with me," Alphonse said.

Loki frowned, confused. "What do you mean?"

"I learned a lot. Seriously, it was really informative, and I can't wait to ask brother what you told him. See what matches up, you know. It was fun talking with you too, especially since I'm guessing I got the friendlier conversation out of mine and Ed's."

Any friendliness left in Loki's expression melted away. Alphonse didn't seem hostile at all, still giving off a very approachable vibe, even as his words made Loki's insides feel like ice. "I don't know what you mean."

Alphonse smiled, the same disarming grin he'd been wearing since Loki first spoke with him. "Come on, Loki," he said, a hint of laughter in his voice. "I figured out you were lying as soon as you agreed on the reason Ed punched you. Comments on his height haven't bothered him for a couple years now. Anyway, I gotta get back to Central Command. Ed's probably off freaking out about me right now. It was nice meeting you!"

Loki didn't return the sentiment.


	12. Chapter 12

Surprisingly enough, there was a bright side to Loki's (disastrous in hindsight) meeting with Alphonse. He'd half expected them to kick him out or finally make good on that ever-looming threat to arrest him, but instead it seemed they'd come to some sort of consensus on trusting him _more._ Or, well, just in a different way.

Apparently his mostly consistent story was enough to encourage at least a little amity, even if the very sight of that bright, good-natured smile of Alphonse's simultaneously made Loki feel more at ease and like he wanted to clout him.

Loki no longer saw him as innocent or naïve, not anymore. He may seem it in some ways, but he was not to be taken lightly. Really, Loki needed to stop underestimating any of these humans. Their sly methods were far more advanced than he would have given them credit for. If nothing else, they were earning some of his respect for it.

More and more he was realizing how reversed their methods were from Asgard's. War was a last resort rather than a first here, where politics and cunning strategies reigned.

It was a world that favored skills like his own, and he couldn't decide if he loved or hated it. It had been nice, in a roundabout way, to be one of few on Asgard who regularly used manipulation as a weapon. Many of them hated him for it but still predictably fell for his tricks, and as a result it had gotten fairly easy to get away with all sorts of things. On the flip side, the awareness that what he'd always excelled at was actually appreciated was… well, nice. He might have been tempted to stay indefinitely in Amestris if he wasn't missing his magic, if just for the knowledge available here, and for the inclusiveness of _some_ of these mortals (excluding the Elrics and Mustang, of course – they'd made it no secret they were suspicious of Loki's intentions, not that he'd given them any reason to).

It had come to his attention that he'd misunderstood the common perception of alchemists. Yes, State Alchemists had been referred to as 'dogs of the military' by quite a few people, but that was not for their alchemic talents but for how they chose to use them – for the military versus for the people. It was almost a little shocking, seeing just how much people seemed to like most alchemists.

Loki had met with Mustang and the Elrics two more times since meeting the brothers, each for fairly short periods of time. None of them offered much explanation for the slow-moving investigation on their end of things, and Loki was well aware pushing them right now would not give him much more. Any weaknesses he might have been able to exploit in one of them was carefully guarded by the others – if he wanted to get them to let things slip, he'd probably need to speak with them individually, and the brothers seemed determined not to let each other out of their sights.

And that wasn't even considering Mustang's right hand, that stone-faced woman who rarely said much and never let her guard down. He'd prodded verbally at Hawkeye, just a little when she came to escort him to the office one time, and he'd come to two conclusions from that encounter.

One, that her weakness was Mustang's wellbeing.

Two, that she was fast enough to cock and point a gun at him before he'd even registered she'd pulled it out to begin with.

He decided it wasn't worth trying to get anything from her, because he had no doubts she would not hesitate to kill him if she ever believed he had any true intentions of hurting Mustang. A bullet in his brain would certainly make for an unfortunate end to an unfortunate life, in human form no less. He'd much rather die intact, and that meant _with_ his sorcery. He did make sure to get his hands on a new gun after that experience, because the extra security never hurt.

Oh, and he hadn't forgotten about that 'stomach dimension' Edward had mentioned, though he hadn't yet figured out what that was about. It had to be one of the most bizarre phrases he'd ever heard, and he'd heard a lot of odd ones over the course of his many years. It was a promising avenue of research, though, if the phrasing wasn't misleading. The moment he thought he could successfully get more details from them, he'd bring it up again.

The last eleven days had gone by mostly uneventfully. The afflicted officers had, on the second "request," mostly agreed to go in for the psychological exam. All Loki had been told of the results was that there had been a number of odd responses, but there was nothing concrete or consistent aside from the eye color to prove the existence of any sort of agenda, malicious or not. As far as anyone could tell, they all still had their personalities intact and hadn't changed much at all, aside from the occasional comments or unusual behaviors.

In three days, Loki would visit Central Command again, to deliver any new information he'd gathered (he hadn't really found any, and even if he had he wouldn't necessarily share it) and learn whatever they were willing to tell him of their own progress. So far 'teaming up' with them hadn't garnered much of a useful result, but he wasn't at the point where he was ready to abandon the venture entirely. Once he'd stopped provoking them they'd calmed down in turn, and with time he hoped they'd start trusting him with more details.

No, instead of progressing with locating the Mind Stone, Loki was forced to bear witness to the camaraderie between Mustang and the Elrics, and the hard-to-miss love between those brothers. Edward shared so much of that brash, no-drivel attitude Thor had yet to grow out of, yet somehow never failed to listen to Alphonse and ensure he didn't go unheard.

Alphonse was quieter, the mellower and seemingly more mature of the two, and the respect he had for Edward was clear. They didn't truly argue, but presented their opinions and discussed it, and Loki hated them for it. (Well, not truly, but it did grate on his nerves.)

It was everything Loki had always wished for, and what he'd believed he had while he was still a child and did not yet understand just how little his very nature was liked. He'd certainly never had anyone's respect. Thor's friends were just that – Thor's friends – and looking back on it, Loki had been scarcely more than the annoying younger sibling who'd trailed after them looking for approval. It was embarrassing to dwell on now, remembering just how naïve he'd been.

Even worse was knowing Thor hadn't even realized. Loki had a feeling Thor had never seen things like this, had not even known there was a problem to begin with, and he wondered if Thor would have listened if Loki had tried to talk with him about it. Probably not. Thor was arrogant and did not listen well, or at least he had been before his banishment. Perhaps he'd changed (over the course of a weekend, though? Loki didn't have high hopes) and Loki had simply not had the chance to see it before he'd fallen.

If When he made it back out of this pocket dimension, he'd find out; there was no way he'd just return to Asgard if given the choice, but he could observe from a distance. Loki had always been partial to Vanaheim, and he may even pay Midgard a visit, if just to compare their world to this one. There was an entire universe outside of the Nine Realms too, and as long as he didn't get himself trapped on another world like this one then there was no way he would pass up that opportunity.

Once upon a time he would have wanted Thor to join him, but now he had a feeling he would be doing the bulk of his exploration alone. Maybe outside of the realms, where he could travel with anonymity and without a reputation, he could even find a companion of sorts. Loki was a highly skilled illusionist, for gods' sakes; he could become anyone he wished.

This all was conditional on him getting ahold of that Mind Stone, of course. He had a feeling attempting to return to Truth without it would not end in his favor.

"Loki!" a girl's voice called as he opened the door to the bar. He glanced up at Madeline, one of the hostesses, who was waving at him with a smile that didn't reach her eyes. It was rare to see her anything less than overly jovial, which he'd never understood. How these girls ever seemed to actually enjoy their jobs, Loki had no idea. He couldn't imagine finding prostitution to be in any way favorable, but it was just one more thing he was beginning to ascribe as a cultural difference. At the very least Madame Christmas seemed to genuinely care about the girls working for her. No doubt there were worse places to work out there.

"Is something wrong?" he queried once he was close enough to her to keep from being overheard by customers. Madeline's smile slipped slightly as she glanced over the room again, clearly looking for something.

"You didn't see the madame or Vanessa out there, right?" she queried. "Did either of them say anything to you yesterday, like if they were taking a day off or something? I haven't seen them since last night, and it's not like them to just not show up."

"I haven't heard anything," he said. That was unusual – they generally made a point of ensuring the others knew where they were, just in case a job went wrong. Loki actually didn't mind Vanessa. A bit exuberant and perhaps a little more tactile than Loki preferred, but she'd never been put off by Loki's typically closed off demeanor. He wasn't too concerned about Madame Christmas. She didn't strike him as a typical target, and she was hardly one to go out without a fight. Madeline nodded, expecting his reply.

"I figured," she sighed, nibbling her lower lip and getting deep red lipstick on her teeth. Loki just barely refrained from saying something; he doubted such a comment would be taken at all well when she was nervous like this.

"I wouldn't worry," he said instead, awkwardly patting her shoulder with his fingertips in what he knew was a poor attempt at consolation, but he didn't feel like dealing with overly worried coworkers right now. He never claimed he was any good at reassurance. But it was what many of these humans did to comfort each other, right? Thor had liked to do something similar, though it was more along the lines of a slap on the back hard enough to knock Loki forward a couple steps.

Thinking back on it, he suspected no one in his family but Frigga had been any good at the whole 'reassurance thing.'

"You're right," Madeline said, forcing some cheer back into her demeanor. "Anyway, the madame wouldn't want us slacking off while she's gone. I'm sure something just came up."

* * *

"Tell me, Major," Roy said, his gaze fixed on Riza where she stood stoically by his desk, "do you think I'm making a mistake?"

"In trusting Laufeyson, sir?" Trust Riza to not even need to ask what he was referring to. After spending nearly a decade in the military together it would have almost been surprising if she had to, especially considering her exceptional observational skills.

"Trust is a bit too strong of a word, I think," he said dryly, earning a small quirk of her lips in response.

"Fair enough," she said, her expression almost seeming to reflect a tiny bit of relief if he was reading that correctly. He had no doubt she would have spoken to him earlier if she was genuinely concerned, but maybe he should have had this conversation sooner.

"It reminds me a little of our truce with Scar," she continued. "Something we're only going into out of necessity, in a way. And from what I've seen, he seems to be looking at this the same way we are."

"So you think he's telling the truth." That actually came as a surprise. He'd half expected Riza to tell him off for the leeway he'd been giving Laufeyson.

"Not completely," she said. "I'd be surprised if everything he's said is true. Edward said Laufeyson's accent wasn't Cretan, for one. But there's obviously something dangerous out there, and so far he's the only one who's had any sort of explanation for it, as outlandish as his theory sounds. I'm inclined to believe there's enough truth in his words to make him worth keeping on our side."

"That's right, we still haven't confronted him about that lie about his origin," Roy mused. He'd half forgotten about it, with everything that had been going on with the military. Ever since the attempt to perform those psychological exams, the upper echelon of the military and anyone in the lower ranks who knew about it had been in a minor state of uproar. The possibility of a large scale infiltration (or brainwashing, for anyone willing to hear out such a weird theory) was horrifying, especially for those who knew the dirty truth about that Father character and the homunculi, not to mention the pervasive corruption of most of the generals back then.

Riza just inclined her head slightly in acknowledgement.

"So you think he's trustworthy enough to continue this so-called alliance?" he asked.

"What I believe, sir, is that he'd be a dangerous enemy to make," she said. "More dangerous as an enemy than as an ally. It would probably be in our best interests to make sure he stays where we can keep an eye on him, and just make sure we don't let much unnecessary information slip."

Her fingers flexed slightly where they rested near her gun's hilt. Roy's eyes flicked back up to her face. To most people, she would have looked just as professionally neutral as ever, but he could read an undercurrent of tension in her posture – shoulders stiff, drawn back a little tighter than normal, hands by her side rather than clasped behind her back in parade rest.

"Did he get something from you?" He kept his voice neutral, but the tightening of her jaw told him he wasn't far off the mark. What the hell could Laufeyson have gotten from someone as careful as Riza? She wasn't someone who talked very openly even privately (and even if she would never admit to it, he had a feeling there was still some lingering paranoia over Pride's omniscience keeping her even more close-lipped than she used to be) and she never spoke with any carelessness out where anyone she didn't completely trust could hear.

"I believe he was searching for information on your personal relationships," she admitted after a drawn-out pause. "I'm not sure why, exactly, but if I had to guess I'd say he's looking for leverage of some kind."

"And you actually told him something?" Roy said, disbelieving. The tension constantly radiating off Laufeyson was enough to put everyone in the office on edge, not just the most observant of them. There was no way Riza, who eyed even kids with a little bit of suspicion, wouldn't have picked up on it and guarded her words accordingly.

"Of course not," she said sharply, her hands clenching into fists for just a moment before she forced herself to relax again. "I drew my gun on him when he pushed too far. Sir."

"You threatened to shoot him."

She hesitates only a second before nodding slightly in assent. "I did."

He barely bites down on the laughter bubbling up, the humor evident in his tone. "I wish I'd been there to see it."

Their close bond wasn't something they could easily keep hidden, and it was a pretty common assumption (correct or not) that they were romantically involved. Still, no one could deny that both of them had made it to their relative ranks on their own merit, and at this point that was really the best he could hope for. Laufeyson would have figured it out without Riza's response, if he hadn't even before that interaction.

Riza smiled, just a little, and that made it all worth it.

If only he'd been more careful, maybe Roy never would have found himself in the position he had.

A crumpled letter lay abandoned on his desk.

* * *

There was a slip of paper on the counter, the corner tucked under an empty beer mug. By the Norns, if this was another proposition, Loki _was_ going to stab someone. He would go out there to the light post or whatever other place they'd named, knife them and tell this job good riddance (really, what had he expected, working at a brothel bar?).

An address was written in sharp chicken scratch, and he would have tossed it straight out if he didn't recognize the handwriting.

Madame Christmas's.

She'd never learned to write all that nicely, she'd told him a while back when he complained he could hardly read the instructions she'd written out for him.

 _"When you grow up the way I did," she said, "writin' nicely isn't exactly a priority. You think this country's lousy now? Should'a seen it back then – everybody fightin' everyone else, 'cause there was a war on and a lotta people were dyin'. Went on for years. My father got blown to pieces and us girls didn't have many options back then. 'Specially after my brother went and got himself killed in it too, dumpin' a snot-nosed brat into my care like I had a way of takin' care of him. He liked to complain 'bout my writin', too. You remind me of him."_

 _She ruffled his hair and he bit back a complaint, grudgingly accepting the gesture so similar to his mother's. He didn't mention her handwriting again._

There was nothing more to the note, nothing to tell him what she wanted or why she would do something this strange. He was positive she hadn't come into the bar. She was fairly distinctive in appearance. Someone else had left this note, and he was positive this wasn't just for a friendly chat. No, something was wrong. Either she'd gotten in trouble and needed to disappear, or someone had gotten to her.

Loki eyed the patrons in the bar, debating whether to kick them out or just leave. One of the girls, a quieter one he couldn't recall the name of was still in the room, so he left her to it and took off into the night. This was more important than ensuring no sticky-fingered drunkard got ahold of the little cash they'd made that night, and it hadn't been busy anyway.

It wasn't late enough yet for the streets to be empty. Alcohol was heavy in the air, high pitched giggles grating on his ears as he pushed past clusters of people without caring if they fell. The closer he got to his destination the thinner the crowd got, and as he studied his passing surroundings he realized he was nearing the edge of the city.

This was such a bad idea on so many levels. He should just cut his losses and turn back, Madame Christmas be damned. Was he truly willing to risk himself if someone was just using her to bait him?

He supposed the fact that he hadn't slowed down as he approached the address's general location answered that question well enough.

If Loki was reading the numbers on the paper slip correctly, then Madame Christmas had chosen one of the sketchiest possible places to have him come. A derelict warehouse of sorts stood (barely) before him, half the windows broken in and litter rustling along the edges of the crumbling gray concrete.

This was, without a doubt, a trap.

There was even a handy little light flickering right above the slightly ajar door. The madame would rather have jumped off the roof than execute such an obvious ruse. How in the Nine Realms did someone this incompetent get ahold of her? Or was he wrong in assuming the paper was even written recently – had it been penned months ago and just been repurposed by some simpleton with a grudge?

Loki, of course, did not enter through the front door. Or the back, for that matter; it was just as likely they were waiting for him there as well. He was far too smart to go around falling for such cheap tricks. He was the _master_ of tricks.

It seemed only fitting to create an entrance of his own, complete with overexaggerated flair to balance out the terribly boring style of these mortals. They probably wished to keep this whole affair a secret, so naturally Loki was going to make that as difficult as possible for them. They would be hard-pressed to remove evidence of Loki's presence here.

A clap of his hands, pressing them against the concrete wall (tricalcium silicate, dicalcium silicate, tricalcium aluminate…), and blue lightning lit up as the rectangular shape of a door began to form. Excess concrete formed a thick border around the doors (pushing open a door made of concrete was not going to work well without first thinning it significantly), while a mural of Yggdrasil decorated the doors themselves, the door handles shaped like two entwined snakes biting each other's' tails. Cement horns reminiscent of his helmet arched out over the top, barely supporting their own weight.

Perfect.

He shoved the doors open, arms splayed wide, the gun gripped tightly in one hand and pointing straight ahead the only sign his confidence wasn't completely real.

He was going to look like such a fool if this really was just Madame Christmas being dramatic.

But instead of Madame Christmas, an army of enemies or even just a single idiotic assailant, Loki was greeted by the sight of a very familiar gloved hand aimed straight at him.


	13. Chapter 13

When Roy was seven years old, he prayed to God with everything he had that his daddy would come home from the war soon. His best friend Davie's dad wasn't coming back anymore, because he got shot by the evil Aerugonians and Roy didn't want that to happen to his dad too.

Three days later he came home from school and watched as the last remnants of his home crumbled to ash, and his dad came home since he didn't have a mom to take care of him anymore.

He told Roy it wasn't his fault, that he wasn't the one who sent the bomb, but Roy knew that was a lie. God had let his wish come true. But wishes weren't free, and that was the day Roy understood the idea of equivalent exchange and decided he hated God.

His dad got called back to the war anyway and left him with Aunt Chris. _Someone has to fight to protect the people_ , he said, giving Roy a hug before he turned away and didn't look back.

Roy didn't like Aunt Chris. She talked funny, almost never helped him with his homework and lived in a weird house in Central City with a lot of girls he didn't know. She wasn't his mom and she couldn't replace her. He wanted Dad to come back and take Roy with him, even though he knew his dad needed to protect Amestris and couldn't do that if he was protecting Roy instead. He didn't dare pray for his dad to come back again, so he started learning alchemy so he could go out there and help protect the people.

He was eight when Aunt Chris sat him down and told him his dad was a hero who'd saved a lot of people but died while doing it.

It wasn't fair, but secretly he resented her for even existing. He wished she'd died instead of his dad, or his mom, or that she'd never been born so his dad would have been forced to stay for Roy. But she never got mad at him, not even when he screamed at her and told her how he really felt.

Roy was angry all the time. A low rage bubbled under his skin, winding his muscles into tight coils just waiting to lash out and destroy. He wanted to kill the ones who'd murdered his parents, to choke the life out of them and make them understand what they'd done to him.

Aunt Chris started teaching him martial arts after he blew up one time and threw her favorite ornament, a little glass bird she later told him had been a gift to her from his father. She said it would help him work through what he was going through, and even though he didn't believe her at first he eventually had to admit she was right. It helped refocus him to his original desire to defend, not destroy.

She taught him how to be charming, how to lie and make people believe whatever he wanted them to. The girls brought him little gifts with their scant earnings every time his birthday came around and took him out on fun little outings to try to help him forget on the anniversaries of his parent's deaths.

It was an unconventional family and it changed as the girls got older, retiring to other jobs as new ones joined, but they never forgot about him. They couldn't replace the parents he'd lost, but he never felt unwanted and he'd started considering his aunt a second mother of sorts.

When Roy joined the military he promised himself he would never have children. He didn't talk about Aunt Chris or the girls, vaguely mentioning his parents had died if anyone asked about his upbringing and leaving it at that. As far as anyone else was concerned, he didn't have any family.

The risk was just too high, especially as he started rising through the ranks at an unusually fast rate. He may have gained the title of Hero of Ishval but he'd made a hell of a lot of enemies in the process. And for what? Any faith he had left in his reasons for the atrocities he'd committed were dashed when the true purpose of the wars was revealed.

Wrath had threatened Riza. As far as most of them knew she was the one who mattered most to him, and in a lot of ways they weren't wrong. But she wasn't one to be cowed by threats; she was strong and someone to be feared in her own right. She didn't need him to protect her.

If they'd gone after his aunt and her girls? Oh, there would have been hell to pay. Riza had signed onto the military with the willingness to die for what she believed in. Aunt Chris and the girls were still civilians, tough and crafty as they were. Almost no one was aware of their connection to him aside from his occasional 'pleasure visits' to the brothel, and he'd taken care to keep it that way whenever possible.

He wasn't going to drag them into his fight, not if he could help it.

* * *

When Roy found the note left on his desk, he knew their affiliation had been uncovered by someone, probably someone in the military given their ability to get into his office unnoticed.

He crushed the slip of paper in his fist, the address already committed to memory, cold fury sliding up his spine with the promise of death. The possibility that Chris was already dead sat heavy in his mind.

They were going to burn in the lowest pits of hell for this.

* * *

Roy had known Laufeyson couldn't be trusted. It was a conclusion he'd come to right from their first meeting, and it hadn't changed even though most of what he'd said couldn't be proven false (or true, on that note) aside from his claim to come from Creta.

Still, it came as a shock when that nonsensically intricate door had appeared in a burst of alchemic energy and Loki-fucking-Laufeyson had walked through, confidence oozing from every step he took.

 _"I wouldn't worry too much about him," Chris said, taking a long drag from her cigar._

 _Roy frowned, absently tracing an old water stain ring on the wooden counter with his fingertips. "He seems dangerous. He's got the eyes of a killer."_

 _"So do you," she pointed out. "Somethin' tells me you couldn't see that look in their eyes if they didn't care. And you haven't seen him when he thinks no one's lookin', either. He reminds me of you, back when you had all that anger and before y'knew how to let it out."_

 _He wasn't sure whether or not to take offense to that comparison. "You're saying I should trust him?"_

 _"Probably not." She was studying him, probably gleaning more than she'd ever admit in his body language. "But he ain't the killer of those people, Roy-boy. If he's comin' to you lookin' for help then I'd at least hear what he has to say. I think he could be a good enough man if given half a chance."_

God, Roy was such an idiot. From what Al had said after meeting Laufeyson the guy could _act_ , and you'd probably never suspect a thing if he was really trying. His aunt was good at spotting deception, but she wasn't perfect. A good enough actor could probably pull one over her.

And she'd given the guy a chance. Taken him in, given him a job, helped him out when he seemed desperate. Was it all fake? Just a game to win her trust, and by extension, Roy's?

He should have suspected this when he'd learned Laufeyson worked for her. He should have known. It was way too big of a coincidence to ignore.

It was all he could do to keep himself from snapping his fingers, ending any chance of resistance before it even began. But the memory of Envy's screams echoed in his head. He'd felt a sick satisfaction in the moment, though the memory brought only nausea when he recalled just how close he'd come to losing the image of himself he'd always strived towards.

Laufeyson was aiming the gun at him, his eyebrows high as he stared at Roy. It was hard to tell if his dumfounded expression was real or just manufactured, and Roy waited for it to be replaced by satisfaction or glee. It wasn't.

"What in Hel's name are you doing here?" Laufeyson demanded, and Roy felt his own eyebrows raise.

"You mean you're not the one who left the note?" he said, lowering his arm slightly. It wouldn't make much of a difference if he needed to snap anyway.

"You received one as well?" Laufeyson raised the hand not holding the gun, opening his fist to reveal a crumpled slip of paper. His eyes were alert, scanning their surroundings before landing back on Roy. "Who did they take to get your attention? One of the Elric brothers? Or perhaps that woman you're so fond of – Major Hawkeye?"

"It doesn't matter," Roy bit out, but he reluctantly let his arm drop into a less openly hostile position. He couldn't figure out if Laufeyson was playing a game here or if he was serious, but he wasn't about to give up one of his more closely guarded secrets so easily and tell Laufeyson about his aunt. Laufeyson lowered the gun, still looking around at what was visible in the low lighting of the warehouse.

The sound of footsteps made them both turn sharply to the side, Roy with his hand extended and Laufeyson with the gun cocked, pointing at the shadows as a heavyset and familiar figure appeared.

"Can't say I'm surprised you boys don't get along very well," Chris said with a sigh, one hand on her hips, looking completely fine and unharmed. Roy relaxed, the tightness in his chest easing as he realized she was okay. Next to him, Laufeyson had somehow managed to get even stiffer, his finger tensing on the trigger.

"Don't let your guard down," Laufeyson hissed, his gaze never leaving Chris's. "Look at her eyes, Mustang."

She smiled, and Roy felt his stomach lurch as he did what Laufeyson had said.

Her eyes were amused with no sign of concern, crinkled at the corners, and very, very blue.

* * *

They had Madame Christmas.

Loki suspected they had Vanessa as well, and he wasn't sure if it was more dangerous to look away from Madame Christmas (if she was even in there anymore – just how significant were the Stone's effects on her?) or to ignore their surroundings in favor of keeping his eyes on the known risk.

The only consolation in this worsening situation was the presence of Mustang.

Loki hadn't seen the general in action, but he'd heard enough to know he was a formidable foe and someone he wanted on his side. Which he seemed to be, at least for the moment. But Loki had a feeling the madame was someone important to Mustang (given his reaction upon seeing her, this was more than just a hunch) and if Loki hurt her, even in the name of self-defense, there was no guarantee he would remain an ally even in the loosest of definitions.

"You weren't kiddin' when you said you came from far away, huh, Loki?" Madame Christmas said, and Loki almost pulled the trigger out of sheer alarm. "How'd ya manage to land yourself here of all places?"

"What did it show you?" Loki asked, dreading the response but hating the idea of not knowing even more. "What knowledge did the Stone give you?"

Mustang's eyes were flicking between the two of them, clearly trying to follow the conversation and failing. Madame Christmas smiled again, the hard lines Loki was so accustomed to seeing in her face softening in what almost looked like reverence.

"The truth," she said, and Mustang inhaled sharply. _Not_ that _truth_ , Loki mentally corrected him. Most likely. "Who ya really are, for starters. How much there is out there. And understandin', of what needs t' be done, for the sakes of everyone in the universe. Can ya imagine? A world without war? Sufferin'?"

"Who's your head of command?" Loki asked, keeping his tone calm even as his heartbeat sped up. This didn't sound at all like another human was in control, especially not if his true identity was known to them. There shouldn't have been anyone in this world with that sort of information.

"Y'know, they were hopin' I could just convert you myself," she said conversationally, "but y' both are way too stubborn for that." She reached for her small handbag as if she hadn't noticed the gun Loki still had trained on her.

"Keep your hands where I can see them, or I _will_ shoot," Loki said softly, dangerously.

"Don't you dare," Mustang growled, a note of panic shining clear in his voice.

She ignored him and pulled out a small handgun, not looking concerned in the slightest.

Loki didn't hesitate. He didn't allow himself to hesitate.

He fired.


	14. Chapter 14

Loki had always prided himself on his accuracy.

The cornerstone of his strategies relied on unpredictability. He'd spent years honing his skills, learning different weapons, creating a library of abilities and tactics that were seemingly unrelated and suited to a variety of situations. He'd noticed the tendency of war leaders to favor certain tactics time and time again, poring over old history texts recounting the battle strategies used by famed leaders in wars across Asgard and other realms. One would favor aerial assaults, focusing his armies on flight capabilities that allowed him to reach locations otherwise impossible to navigate to. Another employed attacks in the dark, when the enemy was asleep. Battering forces, seidr battalions, frontal attacks, sniper teams.

An intelligent enough enemy could predict the patterns, guess the type of attack they may be facing if they knew who the director of their forces was. Have an army of archers, looking to the sky; feign sleep while holding their weapons at the ready.

But no one could defend against everything, not truly. Look too much to the sky, and the ground beneath their feet goes neglected. Wait through the night too often, and exhaustion in the day would be the cause of their demise. Divided attention created more openings, because they never knew where to look. What saved them one battle would destroy them the next.

Loki had his preferences, of course. Stealth and magic were his go-to defaults, in part because of their unpredictable nature. But it was hardly his only strength. He knew how to fight with a sword, with a spear, with a bow.

And he knew how to fire a gun and have the bullet land exactly where he intended it to.

Madame Christmas's grip on the gun loosened and it clattered to the ground, but that was the only confirmation Loki had that his shot hadn't missed before he heard a telltale snap and white-hot pain shot up his right hand and arm. Orange and yellow overshadowed his vision. His own gun slipped from his fingers, panic flooding his mind even as he distantly knew it shouldn't have come as much of a surprise. A shout escaped before he could cut it off.

The fire was out as quickly as it had appeared, and the cool air stinging his skin was even worse than the actual burning had been. Loki stumbled back a couple steps, his arm shaking as he tried to force himself to ignore the damage for the time being. Mustang had run to Madame Christmas, but Loki wasn't terribly concerned about either of them right now. She would lose some blood and her hand would likely be unusable for a while (and in a worst-case scenario she'd never fully recover mobility) but a clean shot through the wrist would hardly kill her.

Distracted as he was, he didn't notice the man until he was already right in front of Loki, thrusting a long golden scepter at Loki's chest with an unhinged smile.

It barely broke the skin, the razor tip just resting against his sternum as Loki stared dumbly at it for a second. A bright blue glow radiated from a large gem nestled between its blades.

He could feel tendrils of magic twisting through his body, reaching for his mind. Conflicting emotions overtook him – desperation for magic even if it wasn't his own ( _it wasn't enough, it couldn't be; the void in his chest reopened like a fresh, gaping wound_ ) and blinding horror as he realized what that stone was and what was about to happen to his mind ( _twisting, distorting, mutilating his thoughts to bend him to their will_ ).

Nothing happened.

"Who are you?" he demanded, immediately regretting it when he heard the shakiness of his voice. Oh, Hel, he was going to kill Mustang very, _very_ slowly if he ever got the chance. Loki wasn't going to get a damn thing out of his opponent when he sounded so weak. The man's eyebrows knitted together as he looked down at the staff.

"This should have worked by now," he muttered. Loki didn't wait to hear what he'd do next, twisting to the side and sweeping the man's legs out from under him. He clapped his hands together, gritting his teeth at the agonizing sting that caused, before pressing them into the concrete floor and encasing the man in a small dome reminiscent of the earthen one he'd seen when he first landed in Amestris. He didn't want to kill him, not yet; if he could he really wanted to interrogate (read: torture) the man who probably had a lot to do with Madame Christmas's current mental state.

Loki needed to get that scepter away from him, as well. The Stone was right there, mere meters away from Loki, and he'd be damned if he was going to just let it go. Still, he needed a few seconds to regroup. His arm was going numb (and that did not seem like a good sign) and the residual magic dissipating in his body felt like he was losing his seidr all over again. It _ached_ and made his thoughts fuzzy with need.

Satisfied that the dome would hold the man for the moment, Loki staggered back a few steps, snatching his gun off the ground with his undamaged hand, careful not to let his guard down. The adrenaline crash was going to be a nightmare later, and the longer he could keep himself going before then the better.

He could hear scuffling behind him, and he turned just in time to see Mustang clap and slam his hands on the ground, the floor shooting up and sealing Madame Christmas's hands. The steady stream of blood spilling from the hole in her wrist increased as she tugged hard, but the makeshift restraints didn't budge at all.

Hold on a moment – Mustang could perform alchemy without a transmutation circle?

He wasn't going to let that go easily. Now wasn't the time, but they would have words later.

"We need to leave," Loki said after a few moments, once he was sure his voice would remain steady. He had no doubt the man with the Stone had backup. It was shocking they hadn't already appeared, and he wasn't sure what that meant. Nothing good, surely.

If he could get Mustang moving with Madame Christmas, then he'd be free to take the Stone. Mustang would undoubtedly stop Loki if he figured out what was in the scepter, and he didn't relish the idea of a repeat performance of the burns on his arm.

He could undo the hypnosis, return the mind of the Madame.

He could take the Stone back to Truth. He could _leave._

Mustang stood up, all military precision and straight, rigid lines as he stared down into blue eyes. Blood was seeping from his hairline and into his eye, the wound it originated from too far up on his head to actually see. Loki gritted his teeth. "Mustang, we need to _go_. We can take her with us, but only if we leave _immediately_."

"Don't order me around," Mustang snapped, but he clapped again and some of the concrete receded from Madame Christmas's hands, separating them from the ground. Enough was left to keep them encased and unusable. It didn't stop her from immediately swinging the block at Mustang's face.

Mustang jerked back and out of range, failing to retaliate out of what Loki suspected was too much sentiment and not enough understanding that the woman he knew was _gone,_ replaced by an uncanny copy too similar for comfort but different in all the ways that mattered most. He couldn't recall if the books he'd read had explained how to undo the alterations, not after this many years. He'd only remembered the detail on eye colors because of his fascination over such an arbitrary change and why it would even occur.

Before he could make a move to help Mustang there was a loud boom coming from the dome he'd left that strange man with the scepter in, and pieces of concrete went flying as the entire side of it exploded outwards. The man stepped out, looking disgruntled (or, as Edward would have said, 'pissed off').

His first move was to thrust the staff in Loki's direction, which seemed ridiculous considering it was a short-range weapon and he was at least ten feet away. His first attack suggested it needed to make contact to be useful, anyway.

An energy blast of some sort, strong enough to throw the others in the room a little off balance, shot out the front and struck Loki dead-on.

On second thought, Loki could concede that the move wasn't so ridiculous. It was actually quite effective.

He hit the ground hard, skidding in a completely undignified tumble of (fragile, far too weak, too _human_ ) limbs. His head cracked against the ground, and for a few moments everything seemed hazy and distant, spinning uncontrollably.

 _"We should have a contest," Thor said. He was grinning widely, gap-toothed and flushed, blond hair stuck to his forehead as he gripped the bar of the carousel. "You can use your tricks to make it spin, right?"_

 _Loki shifted nervously because he didn't really want to do this, but he'd look weak if he said no. Sif was here too, after all, and maybe, just maybe she'd be impressed if he did well this time, if he could beat Thor for once in his life without resorting to his tricks._

 _"All right," Loki said, straightening up to hide his apprehension. He was an_ Asgardian _, a future warrior, not a weakling who cowered from a challenge. "Whoever holds on longer wins, correct?"_

 _"And no magic to cheat," Sif added, glaring at Loki through narrowed eyes, hands on her hips as she tilted her head in obvious suspicion. Thor laughed and clapped Loki roughly on the shoulder._

 _"He wouldn't cheat," he said, such conviction in his voice that Loki wanted to crawl into a hole and wallow in guilt. Because he_ would _cheat, if it meant they'd look at him with even a little of the respect everyone had for Thor. He wouldn't hesitate to._

 _He murmured the incantation, not yet skilled enough to do it nonverbally, and he didn't cheat._

 _The spell worked beautifully, crafted just right to slowly increase the speed of the spin until one of them let go. Thor won, of course. He always won. Loki's palms were bleeding where the skin had torn, and his arm hurt terribly where he'd landed awkwardly on it. Nausea overwhelmed him almost as soon as he'd fallen off and he retched, throwing up the little he'd eaten for lunch. He could barely think, his head was spinning so badly. The bile burned his esophagus, but he's pretty sure the lump in his throat was because Thor and Sif were laughing at him._

In a detached way, like he wasn't truly there, Loki could hear the sound of fighting – the snap of fingers and subsequent roar of flames, blasts of air and crackling of some sort of energy, and gunshots. It was a small mercy they'd apparently decided to ignore him for the time being. Maybe they thought he was dead. He didn't feel very alive.

Hands were suddenly grabbing at him and he instinctively lashed out, reaching for the magic he no longer had lying dormant in his fingertips. All it did was remind him of the gaping hole where his seidr used to be, and elicit a sharp curse from his supposed attacker.

" _Fuck_ , you're stronger than you look, even half dead," a familiar voice (Edward?) grouched, arms hooking under Loki's armpits as he started dragging him across the floor. Loki forced his eyes open, staring blankly at the golden hair almost hitting his face before he finally caught up to what exactly Edward was attempting to do.

"Unhand me at once," he growled, except it came mostly unintelligible and more like a groan than anything intimidating. A whole new wave of loathing surged up as he started trying to take stock of his current state. It had taken so little to incapacitate him, even less than he would have expected of his human body.

"Just shut up," Edward said, but without much heat. He seemed distracted and considering the amount of gunshots, yelling and surges of wind and light Loki had a pretty good guess as to why. There were a lot of new voices in the fray.

Why wasn't Edward joining them? From the little he'd pieced together, it was obvious Edward was an extremely skilled alchemist especially in combat use, yet here he was dragging Loki out of the warehouse and to the side like a pawn rather than in the fray like Loki would have expected.

He was too out of it to explore the question much more. He couldn't even work up the normal amount of self-righteous fury at being manhandled in such an undignified manner. They were out of the warehouse before he regained even a trace of control over his limbs. It didn't stop him from shoving Edward away the moment he had enough strength to do so, forcing himself to his feet and ignoring the way his head spun at the movement. Edward scoffed but didn't fight him on it.

"Get out of here for now," Edward said. "Fuery can take you to a hospital."

"I'm _fine_ ," Loki snapped. Edward, not surprisingly but still annoyingly, didn't believe him.

"You idiot," Edward hissed. "You're not fine. Your arm looks half-baked, there's blood all over your face and there's a _fucking bullet hole_ in your _fucking side._ I don't have time to play games with you, so get the fuck out of here _right fucking now_ before I _kill_ you _myself_."

Loki was pretty sure he would have remembered getting shot. That wasn't something easy to miss, but a quick glance down made him change his mind on arguing that point. It was doubtful it had hit anything important or would even need much more than a couple stitches, but it was still bleeding. His injuries were mere scratches compared to the type he normally sustained in battle, yet he felt like he'd been repeatedly bludgeoned over the head by Mjölnir and then thrown off a building.

"You have no right to speak to me in such a manner," Loki said, and to his pleasure it came out sounding a lot steadier than he was feeling.

"I changed my mind, you're even stupider than an idiot." Edward motioned wildly for someone nearby – Fuery, Loki's mind supplied after a moment – to come over, and the young spectacled man came running over and gaped at Loki.

"Oh my god. Are you okay?" Fuery said, not giving Loki a chance to respond before he turned to Edward and repeated, "Is he okay?"

"Yes," Loki said.

"No," Edward said. He glared at Loki (who was halfway to passing out again, though he was hardly going to admit so), and Loki glared right back.

Edward groaned. "Fucking hell. At least sit down, you're losing even more blood like this."

"I'm fine," Loki growled.

Before Edward could respond, the noise from the warehouse abruptly cut off. Edward immediately took off running and Loki sat down heavily, the lightheadedness keeping him from even thinking of following. A couple more shots rang out, followed by yelling Loki didn't have the energy to parse, and he passed out before he hit the ground.


	15. Chapter 15

Everything got out of hand so quickly.

Roy wasn't stupid or arrogant enough to go to that warehouse alone. People who targeted him didn't do it lightly, after all; his position in the military offered him more opportunities to push for the governmental reforms so sorely needed after the mess the homunculi left behind, but it also drew even more attention to himself and the people around him.

He'd gone into this career knowing it and had done what he could to bury his past and keep interested parties from looking too deeply. He didn't advertise the relationships he developed with his closer subordinates or with people like the Elrics. As far as anyone else was concerned, they were acquaintances, casual friends at the most. Best to not put them in danger in the first place.

Roy wasn't about to risk the life of his aunt by believing he was strong enough to take care of this on his own.

No, it wasn't a lack of support that let it all go to hell.

Belatedly he was relieved he hadn't _killed_ Laufeyson on instinct, because he'd been damn close to doing so. Chris was clutching her bloody wrist, and as Roy dropped down next to her (he had to be sure she would be all right, brainwashing aside) she leveled on him the coldest glare he'd ever seen on her.

Her blue eyes made his stomach roil from the sheer wrongness of it.

"You don't get it," she murmured, her gaze softening a little as she stared at him. Not with regret, though, with resignation. "What you're messin' with. _Who_ you're messin' with. You're gonna get the ones you love killed if you keep goin' like this."

"I'm not going to let that happen," Roy said.

She snorted. "Roy boy, it's already started, don't y' see? He ain't gonna stop till he gets what he's after, not anymore. We've become part of a bigger world, and I damn sure hope you've figured out the _right_ side t' be on by then."

"Who? Who are you talking about?" he pressed, but rapid footsteps interrupted him. He turned around, and for a second he wasn't sure what to even look at.

There was a bright, glowing blue cube nestled in a golden staff of some sort. More concerningly, its tip was pressed up against Laufeyson, who was staring at the cube, clearly stunned. Roy blinked, forcing himself to look away from it and at the person holding the staff –

"Halcrow?" he said, completely blindsided. " _General Halcrow_?" The guy was supposed to be overseeing a training exercise in the Western Headquarters, not in Central and _definitely_ not attacking people in abandoned warehouses. Neither of the two men seemed to hear Roy.

Sharp pain suddenly exploded on the side of his head, and he cursed himself for getting distracted as he turned back to face Chris, who was now clutching a chunk of concrete in her uninjured hand. Blood trailed down into his eye as he clapped his hands, forming the cement up and around her hands before she could pull away.

Laufeyson had sealed Halcrow in a dome of cement and pressed for Roy to take her and get out, and he split the concrete so the part around her hands was no longer connected to the ground.

And that's when things went from bad but still manageable to uncontrolled chaos.

Chris was attacking and Roy drew back, barely staying on his feet as a blast of wind suddenly erupted behind him. Laufeyson was skidding across the ground, Halcrow was looking almost manic as he spun towards Roy, and out of the corner of his eye he could see the front doors bang open and a few familiar figures rush into the room.

Soldiers started flooding the warehouse right after his subordinates, but it only took seconds to realize they weren't on his side. Fucking hell, he was never going to be able to see people with blue eyes the same way once this was all over. And now he was being faced with a dilemma he'd really hoped he wouldn't have to deal with.

As his confrontation with Chris had proved, these people weren't in their right minds. Something fundamental inside of them – their motivations, what drove them as individuals – had been forcibly altered. He'd asked Laufeyson the last time they'd seen each other if he knew of a way to reverse this Stone's effects, but the man had admitted he didn't.

How he knew about the Stone in the first place was a whole other can of worms, one that Roy was saving for a moment when he thought he might actually get something out of Laufeyson. Roy had probed around a little, and no one knew of anything remotely like a mind-controlling legendary artifact, and he'd never even heard of an alchemic _theory_ to do something like what this Stone did.

And therein lay the crux of the problem. Roy's strengths were, for most practical purposes, lethal. He could kill all these soldiers with just a snap of his fingers, and it wouldn't even be a _challenge_. If this change was reversible, then he was essentially killing hostages. He would be killing technically innocent people even if it was permanent.

Roy had planned for this. His team was here, even Ed and Alphonse, and Riza was in place to start firing from her hidden vantage point. All of them had been instructed to aim for nonvital areas if possible.

Halcrow lunged at Roy, that bizarre staff outstretched.

Roy snapped his fingers and a barrier of flames shot up between them.

He'd planned to buy a couple extra seconds to get to his feet, but it didn't slow the other general down at all.

Halcrow burst straight through the wall of fire as if he hadn't even noticed it was there, and the tip of the staff touched Roy's chest so fast he'd hardly registered it was there. He grabbed it instinctively.

"With you on our side," Halcrow said breathlessly, "the rest of all this should be easy."

The blue gem lit up slightly, and it felt like cool liquid was being injected into his veins. It rushed up towards his head, and a shock of understanding came over him.

This was it. The Stone.

This was what they'd been looking for.

And he was about to get a firsthand account of how it worked.

Well. At least he thought he was.

At least Halcrow looked just as confused as Roy felt, eerie blue eyes narrowing. This close up, it was easy to see Halcrow wasn't in his right mind, either.

"What the hell?" Halcrow growled. "Is it fucking _broken?_ "

"Where the hell did you get that?" Roy said, his free hand reaching for his gun. His fire alchemy didn't seem to have much effect on Halcrow, not without causing physical damage, and as much as he disliked Halcrow it wasn't the general's fault they were in this situation.

He was interrupted by the sound of a gun cocking and another voice right behind him, and the iciness in his veins from that staff seemed to get even more potent. "That's _enough_ , sir. Stand down."

"Major?" he breathed, hand still on his gun as he turned to stare at Riza, desperately hoping he was misinterpreting what was happening.

Her hazel eyes were overlaid with that nauseating blue, her gun trained on his head.

"Mustang!" Alphonse shouted, and the staff was wrenched out of Roy's grip as Halcrow spun around to deal with the younger Elric brother. Roy used the momentary distraction to swing his gun up to point at Riza's forehead. She didn't flinch, just stared at him with that steely determination he'd always loved in her gaze.

Now it just made him feel sick.

They must have targeted her before the altercation even started, while he was wasting time arguing with Laufeyson. Maybe she'd never even made it to her intended position. He should have sent someone with her.

"I said, _stand down_ ," she said, no trace of uncertainty in her voice. He didn't listen.

"Come back to your senses, Major," he said sharply. "Think about what you're about to do."

"You told me to shoot you if I thought you were going down the wrong path," she said. "You _have_ to understand. This is all so much bigger than all of us. We'll _all_ die if you manage to stop what's happening now, and I can't let you do that. Please, General. Don't make me do this." Her finger was tightening around the trigger of her gun, but his own were frozen around his.

He knew there was no way he could pull that trigger.

He had a feeling she knew it, too.

"Can't you hear yourself?" he said, almost pleading. It was disturbing, just how much she sounded like herself yet different at the same time. It was almost like a mockery of the last time she'd pointed a gun at him, right down to the way she tried to reason with him. Only that time he really was the one at fault. "Your mind's been messed with. Please, give me a chance to help you."

"You won't be able to convince him, Major Hawkeye, just shoot him," Halcrow shouted before letting out a pained grunt. Roy didn't turn to see how Al was faring against him.

Riza faltered, for just a split second. Roy struck out with his foot at her midsection.

Her arm snapped down and red-hot pain flared out in his side, right where Lust had once impaled him.

God, it hurt. He snapped his fingers, intending to pull the same trick on Riza that he had on Laufeyson, but she didn't make a sound as her hand was engulfed in flames – she pulled out a backup gun and struck him across the head without holding back.

Alphonse told him later that most of the soldiers had cleared out of the building after that shot, under Halcrow's orders, but not before touching the scepter to Breda's chest. According to Alphonse, the change in Breda's demeanor had been almost instantaneous.

Riza left with them without a backward glance. Breda had followed right after her.

Laufeyson was in bad shape, but not fatally so – Roy felt bad about his addition to the man's injuries, but at least he felt fairly confident in trusting him now. At the very least he wasn't on their enemy's side. It was probably a good idea to try to cement their alliance at this point, especially when their numbers were dropping so rapidly already.

Really, he was willing to ally with pretty much anyone at this point, if it gave him a better shot at getting Riza back.

Chris, who'd been injured even before the all-out brawl, had been stopped by Ed before she could get away, but she was still blue-eyed, not talking, and dangerous.

Alphonse had managed to get ahold of Dr. Knox, who'd been predictably pissed at the small crowd of people demanding his attention. Still, he hadn't turned them away, even as he grumbled about it.

There was so much he needed to do, so much to get done before things went too much farther. He couldn't let this fucking bullet wound set him back, not now. The frostiness from that staff's touch had settled in his bones, crawling in his veins like a parasite.

Roy was going to make them pay for this.

For turning people into cruel, twisted versions of themselves, and having the audacity to make them believe they were truly doing the right thing.

He was so cold.

* * *

A/N - General Halcrow is also known as General Hakuro, depending on the translation. His role in the story was almost completely cut out in the Brotherhood anime, so anime-only readers probably won't recognize the name. For anyone unfamiliar with his character, he's a general, obviously. Major General during canon, but when almost all the generals were arrested or killed after the Father fiasco he, along with a lot of other lower-ranking officers, got a promotion (in the timeline of this fic at least). He was first introduced in Chapter 4 when the Elrics are on a hijacked train. He and his family were the ones taken hostage. He has a more substantial role in the 2003 anime, including the aforementioned hijacking scene, but this doesn't follow the 2003 canon at all so I wouldn't use that as a reference for his characterization here.  
Most people would probably remember him for being the guy who openly disliked and disapproved of Roy and his quick ascent through the ranks.

I'm not super happy with how this chapter turned out, but I've messed with it too much already for now. If something needs clarification or seems disjointed, rewriting is probably the cause - let me know if I messed up somewhere so I can edit it (even more D:) if necessary.


	16. Chapter 16

The wooden wall was scratchy under Al's hand, threatening to splinter as he lightly ran his fingers down the beam. He leaned against it, almost savoring the pinpricks in his skin, and turned to the side to face his brother, gravel shifting under his feet. Ed was staring at his hands, the shadows under his eyes visible even in the dusk.

"I should have known," he muttered. "I could have done more. I should have gone with Hawkeye, or _something_."

"You couldn't have known," Al reminded him, for the seventh time. He'd been counting, because he knew this would happen. "If it wasn't her, then it would have been someone else."

Ed gritted his teeth, slamming a fist back against the wall. It tremored slightly under the pressure. "I was outside arguing with Loki instead of helping. You can't just act like I did nothing wrong, not when I could have been in there with you guys!"

"Well, there wasn't much we _could_ do, not really," Al snapped, before forcing himself to take a deep breath and calm down a little. "You know as well as I do that they probably got to her before the fight even started, and odds are it wouldn't have even made a difference if someone had been with her." Al been so on edge since that fight the night before. He kept imagining he could see flecks of blood on his hands.

A girl's blood. One that hadn't been much older than him, blonde hair sticky where it had gotten stuck in the gaping hole in her chest, leaving thin crimson trails up Al's arms when he'd caught her as she fell. He'd known right from the start there was nothing he could do, that she was a dead woman walking, but he couldn't just leave her.

Unnatural blue eyes had faded into her original blue-gray seconds after she stopped breathing.

Mustang told him later her name had been Vanessa, his voice stiff and blank. Al wasn't sure how Mustang had known her or how close they'd been, but he had a feeling she wasn't really on his mind right now.

Not while Hawkeye was gone.

Al wasn't sure exactly when the change had happened, but he was pretty sure he wasn't the only one with ice in his veins when he'd seen that awful eye color in the Major. If Al hadn't believed in the whole mind control thing before, he sure did now. He wasn't sure he could deny it after seeing Hawkeye, one of the nicest and most loyal people he'd ever known, shoot Mustang (and Loki, he was pretty sure she'd been the one to shoot him too). It was a pretty small comfort that the bullet had gone through Mustang's side, and hadn't actually hit anything important.

That was enough to convince Al that Hawkeye was still in there, even if it didn't seem like it. She was a crack shot, not someone who would coincidentally hit a nonvital area – much less the exact spot where Mustang had been stabbed before. Al doubted Mustang would see it the same way, considering he was the one who'd just been shot by his most trusted subordinate, but maybe once they'd all cooled down a little he'd be willing to hear Al out.

Out of all of them, Mustang had really come out at the bottom.

Ed's glare softened a little. "I know. We can't save everyone, right?" His laugh was bitter. "I thought we were done with all this fighting when we finally defeated that Father guy. I almost wish I hadn't come back from Creta when I did. I could still be out there, eating great food and learning all sorts of interesting stuff. I was thinking of going even further east than Creta, you know."

"But then more people might have died," Al murmured. "I didn't want to fight anyone anymore either, but it's worth it if I can save someone. At least we got back that one lady we originally went in there for, right? I mean, she's still brainwashed, but now we have a chance to find a way to reverse it."

"Yeah, and we only had to get two of our stronger allies shot for it," Ed groused, in that half affectionate way of his. "I swear Laufeyson has zero sense of self-preservation. You should have seen the way he was arguing that he was fine when he was completely fucked over."

"Is that concern I hear? I think he's starting to grow on you," Al teased, welcoming the more lighthearted turn in the conversation. That girl wasn't going to be leaving his mind any time soon, but he wasn't sure how long he could stand to focus on it before it got too entwined with the memory of Nina.

"Yeah, right," Ed said, whacking Al's shoulder with a chuckle. It hurt – Al was pretty sure Ed wasn't taking into consideration Al's now human body when he did that – but Al never said anything about it (he didn't really mind, anyway). Leave it to Ed to try to cheer Al up, even when he himself was having a hard time.

Ed really was the best brother he could have gotten.

How differently would Al have turned out if they didn't have a good relationship? He undoubtedly would have cracked under the torture of that armored prison he'd been trapped in for years, but how long would it have taken him? Not long, he suspected. He would have done almost anything to feel anything at all, even pain.

Spending five years unable to sleep and missing three of his senses was one of the worst tortures he could imagine.

Would a better familial relationship have made a difference for Loki? The man hadn't said anything more about his past after Al's first conversation with him (he still got sour looks over it from time to time) but it sounded like he'd had a pretty strained relationship with his family.

Loki was an enigma he didn't think they'd figure out unless he let them. He was almost otherworldly, in a hard to identify way. It was hard to decide how much of what he said was true or not and he seemed to enjoy conflict, yet he seemed almost depressed in the rare moments Al had been able to observe him without being noticed.

Ed and Mustang both seemed wary of Loki like they thought he'd suddenly switch sides and attack them or something, but Al doubted that. He didn't seem like a truly bad guy, even if he was kind of a dick. Ed thought Al was crazy for actually liking Loki, but considering Al had even managed to become sort-of friends with Scar it really shouldn't have been surprising. Regardless, Al was seriously wondering about where Loki had come from and why he was really here.

He had a feeling it had something to do with that Mind Stone, and not just because it was supposedly some sort of legendary item.

And it was just a theory, one he didn't want to voice yet, but he thought Truth might be involved with this whole mess too.

* * *

The longer Loki spent in this world, the more glaringly (and literally painfully) obvious one of his weaknesses became.

He was underestimating his opponents because they were human.

In his Asgardian Jotun body it still wouldn't have been much of an issue. He might gain a few more injuries, require the use of a little more magic, but he would have still come out the clear victor.

Loki wasn't taking his currently human body into account.

Human bodies were horrible and weak, and he needed to learn how to fight accordingly. He'd approached this all wrong, as if he still had his Jotun durability to protect him when in reality a single bullet had the potential to kill him instantly. No second chances, no magical remedies, and no longer a guarantee of an existence after death (where did mortals go when they expired? He'd never thought to look).

He could take his pick of his current stock of injuries to highlight that point. Mustang had been smart, bringing allies along with him for the inevitable fight, though why exactly he'd been there was still unclear. Madame Christmas had obviously been someone important to him, but neither of them had ever mentioned each other. Unless Mustang was the nephew Madame Christmas had referred to occasionally, and now that he considered it they _did_ share a number of physical traits.

Oh, Hel. Loki had been working for _Flame Alchemist_ General Roy Mustang's blasted _aunt_ all this time, and he'd never even thought to connect the two together. And now he'd gone and _shot_ said aunt.

Only in the wrist, nothing lethal and certainly nothing worth receiving a first-hand demonstration of the Flame Alchemist's titular ability, but then human emotion was not to be taken lightly. Loki was of a mind to go and set Mustang's arm on fire, see how he liked it happening to him. Loki would probably die (at least as long as he was human) for it, but the part of his brain that didn't care about self-preservation thought it was a very satisfying idea.

He'd reconsider it once (not if – he wasn't going to accept failure from himself in this matter) he got his seidr back.

For now, though, he thought he'd be quite satisfied with just getting out of this damn bed.

A bed in a private residence, no less. He hadn't decided yet on the significance of that bit. A sign they considered him too dangerous to put in a civilian hospital? An attempt to keep him out of the enemy's reach? An apology (of sorts) from Mustang for the extensive second-degree burn covering most of his right hand and arm, in the form of sparing him the torture of an antiseptic prison?

He was hardly going to _ask_ , so he supposed it would remain a mystery.

Dr. Knox had been added to Loki's hate list the first time he'd ever laid eyes on the man, when the doctor had screamed at Loki for trying to get up and leave after he'd first woken up. It beat Edward's record as the fastest to get on that list.

"You would do well to leave me be," Loki had growled, and Knox had looked just seconds away from exploding.

"And _you_ would do well to keep that sorry ass of yours right where it is," he'd snarled right back, ranting under his breath as he slapped a cool cloth onto Loki's head with far more force than necessary. "Fucking idiots, all of you. I'm a mortician and my house isn't a fucking hospital. Mustang owes me some real big favors after all this."

Loki had too strong of a migraine to come up with a snappy retort. The sting from the wet towel had not helped.

Everything hurt, way more than it ever really had before he'd become mortal, and he had a newfound understanding of why it seemed to take so little before humans perished.

He'd never realized just how much he relied on his durability and rapid healing until he no longer had it.

He wasn't even sure how much time had passed since the fight. Most of his time until now had been spent in a pained haze, and aside from a foggy memory of Edward and Alphonse standing by the bed (if that was even real – he'd been a little too out of it to tell the difference between dream and reality) none of the others had stopped by to fill in what had happened while he was out.

One thing was certain: he wasn't about to lie around here and wait for Mustang to get angry enough to finish what he'd started. Loki had never been fond of fire, thank you, and the oozing blisters covering his arm had served as a strong reminder as to why.

For a brief moment he debated staying a while longer, just to let himself heal a bit more before he took off. It wasn't like he had a job anymore, not really – not with Madame Christmas out of her mind. His pride was already in pieces, anyway.

Hardly. _Loki_ of _Asgard_ did not need assistance from mortals.

It seemed he was forgetting that more and more often, the longer he spent here.

He needed to leave as soon as possible – before he caved to temptation and got too used to this fake sense of safety.

He wasn't among friends. He would do well to keep that in mind.

* * *

So, I have some bad news. Unfortunately, after a lot of thought, I've concluded that I can't keep up with the weekly update schedule at this point in my life. I could give all sorts of reasons why, but I don't want to ramble on when it really boils down to the fact that I have way too much going on, especially with college starting up again. I haven't been able to devote the time and energy I want to to keep the quality of writing up and on track and I don't like putting out subpar work. My original draft set this to be completed in approximately 17 chapters (so it would have been finished before the summer ended – I didn't think I'd need to worry about writing into the school year), and obviously that didn't happen. We're 16 chapters in and nowhere near the end.  
I am not abandoning the fic! Not at all. Updates just won't be so regular anymore. The plus side? Chapters will probably be longer when they come out, likely in a 3-5k wordcount range, and hopefully the flow will improve as a result. I'm really sorry for the change.


	17. Chapter 17

Loki's quest to leave as far as planting his feet on the ground to stand up when Alphonse appeared in the doorway. The corners of his mouth turned down as he eyed Loki, obviously concerned.

"Are you sure you should be getting up yet? That knock to your head was pretty bad; how're you feeling?" Alphonse asked, stepping further into the room uninvited. Loki bit back a longsuffering groan, though he knew his sour expression hadn't gone unnoticed.

"Splendid," Loki said, giving Alphonse the fakest smile he could manage. "I can barely feel it. Now, if you'll excuse me, I will be leaving now."

"You can't just leave," Alphonse protested, moving back to block the doorway. Loki scowled.

"Last I was aware, there is no reason I couldn't make that decision for myself."

"At least wait until Dr. Knox clears you."

"I'd rather not," he scoffed, before standing up and almost passing out from vertigo.

Alphonse scowled, the most irritated Loki had ever seen him. "I didn't come here to fight with you, Loki. I just want to talk."

"That's a first," Loki muttered, but he didn't attempt to get up again. Better to look like he was acquiescing than to make clear just how weakened he still was. By the Norns, all his efforts to remain in top physical form were going to go to Hel at this rate. So much for maintaining a steady exercise routine. He clasped his hands together for a moment before spreading them wide as Alphonse sat in a chair next to the bed. "Well, what did you come to question me on? The Stone? Why I was in the warehouse? Or did you lot finally decide to arrest me?"

"I wanted to ask you about your family," Alphonse said quickly. Loki's mirthless smile instantly vanished, and Alphonse rubbed the back of his neck with an unusual display of uncertainty. His fingers were playing with the frayed edges of his seat cushion. "I'm pretty sure that part of your story was true, even if you were lying about where you came from. Don't you want to go back to them? Your mom and brother must miss you a lot."

The realization that they knew Loki wasn't from Creta did not come as a huge surprise (rather, he was surprised this was the first he was hearing of it – he thought they'd bring it up a lot sooner). Loki was not willing to humor much of this sort of discussion, though. It seemed he'd need to be clearer on where the line of unacceptable questions was.

"I doubt they do, and frankly I think that's none of your concern," Loki said sharply. He knew he didn't cut the most intimidating figure in his current state, but he leveled Alphonse with one of his coldest glares anyway.

Alphonse, the little brat, wasn't cowed in the slightest.

"I'm not trying to get you to spill your whole life story or something," he said, as if that was reassuring. "I'm just trying to understand, I guess. I kind of thought you were after the Mind Stone because you wanted to protect them. Were they... controlled by it?"

"Of course they weren't, and I fight for myself," Loki snapped. "Don't try to make me out as a hero, or even as a good person. I am neither, and you would do well to keep that in mind." He was sick of this, of playing nice (even if he'd mostly failed in that regard), of needing to constantly lie about _everything_.

"You said you had a brother, right?" Alphonse said, ignoring Loki's warning as if he hadn't even heard it. "Let me guess, he's a lot like Ed."

Loki blinked, startled. "How did you know that?"

"The way you watch us," Alphonse said with a shrug. "Especially how you look at Ed. It's not hard to notice, if you're looking for it. So, what's his name?"

Loki blamed the concussion for the fact he responded at all. He didn't like Alphonse at all, and it was ridiculous to ever think otherwise. And he'd _hardly_ go around telling people he disliked anything about his true past. No, this was the head injury talking. "Thor. We didn't get along very well."

Alphonse hummed sympathetically. "Just too different?"

"To put it mildly," Loki muttered. "He's not truly my brother to begin with. I was… adopted." More like stolen as a war prize.

"That shouldn't matter," Alphonse said. Like he knew _anything_. Loki bristled.

"Oh, it did. I grew up despised because I was different, and did they even bother to tell me why? No."

"Your brother hated you over something like that?"

Thor hadn't even known Loki was adopted, so no, he couldn't accuse Thor of hating him on those grounds. It would have been far-fetched to claim Thor ever showed any sign of truly hating Loki anyway, but his ignorance had done enough damage on its own.

"He may not have," Loki admitted after a pause. "It was never clear just what he thought of me. But what does it matter to you? What do you hope to learn here – did your beloved general ask you to interrogate me in hopes I'd speak with you?"

"Of course not," Alphonse said, looking offended. Loki had firsthand witnessed the boy's ability to lie, so he wasn't convinced. "He and Ed don't even know I'm here. Look, I actually kind of like you. Maybe it's just your personality, but you constantly have this look like something's really weighing on your mind. Sometimes talking about stuff can help you work it out, so I thought I'd offer. I know it's helped me out in the past, and I know the circumstances are probably pretty different, but I know what it's like to be different from everyone else and not fit in. A lot of the time people found it really weird or uncomfortable to talk to a suit of armor, even when they thought there was an actual person inside. I'm not gonna go tell Mustang _or_ Ed about whatever you have to say."

"Unless you find me to be a threat," Loki pointed out.

"Well, yeah, but you knew that already."

"What could _you_ possibly do that would change anything?"

"Contrary to what you seem to think, I'm on your side. You're on ours, after all, and I'm not the only one thinking so after that fight. There's no way Ed'll admit it, but he was worried about you."

That sounded like a stretch of the imagination, even if Alphonse seemed completely earnest. In one way, Loki almost felt wrong speaking about his alienation with a boy who'd experienced it in such a severe way. None of them spoke about it much, but what little he _had_ heard of Alphonse's time in the armor it had been extremely trying mentally. Loki drummed his fingers on his knee.

"If I speak with you, would you answer some questions of my own?" If Loki could get some information along the way… this might turn out to be worthwhile, after all. He could omit most of the details anyway.

"If it's something I can answer, then sure."

"Fine." Loki folded his hands. "Ask, and I'll answer if I wish. Take care not to push your luck."

"Okay." Alphonse took a deep breath. "So, Thor and Loki, then? I've never heard of those names. Where are you _really_ from?"

"Asgard," Loki said. There was little harm in giving out a name that would mean nothing to them anyway. "I doubt you'll have heard of it – it's very far away."

"Nope, doesn't sound familiar. Why would you bother to lie about something like that? I don't get it."

"That hardly matters. You're getting ahead of yourself regardless; it's my turn," Loki said tightly. "In the warehouse, I observed Mustang uses alchemy the same way we do – without an alchemic array." He raised his eyebrows questioningly. Alphonse grinned.

"Oh, you noticed that? I was wondering when you'd figure it out. Yeah, he's seen Truth too. Mustang was actually the guy I who mentioned was forced through the Gate. He's the reason I ever thought you might be telling the truth about not doing human transmutation, even if your story still doesn't make sense."

It makes no sense even _with_ the whole truth as Loki knew it. It was hardly surprising the edited version was even more nonsensical. "And none of you thought this relevant to tell me sooner?"

"Hey, you're keeping tons of things secret that I'm pretty sure are relevant, so you're one to talk," Alphonse said, rolling his eyes. Almost… fondly.

By the Norns, Loki was going insane if this was what he was starting to read off people.

"So then, what on earth do you think you did to make your family hate you so much?"

Aiming right for the jugular, it seemed. "It's a very complicated situation," Loki said delicately, hoping (even as he knew it wouldn't happen) Alphonse would change tracks.

"We've both got time," Alphonse said, giving a pointed look at Loki. "I bruised my ribs pretty bad in that fight, so I don't really have anywhere to be right now. Neither do you, even if you try to claim otherwise."

Loki sighed in frustration. The longer this entire operation went on – the longer he went without his seidr – the more tiring it got. He'd always loved playing games of trickery and deception, but he'd never realized how nice it had been to have someone (his mother, even Thor to some degree) who already knew _him_ and who he didn't need to pretend so much with. In a way, Alphonse reminded him of Frigga. Younger, less regal, human and male, obviously, but he had a similar sort of air about him.

He would make a good father someday.

"This is in confidence, understand?" Loki said, not truly believing it was a promise that would be kept. Alphonse would still have to feel guilty afterwards if he turned right around and told the others – he was far too nice to truly feel no remorse over betraying someone's confidence. Loki almost looked forward to giving him a sad, wounded look if he ever found out Alphonse had shared what Loki said. It would almost be worth it.

"Of course."

"I'm… a prince," Loki said.

Alphonse didn't look fazed at all. It was disappointing, to say the least. Loki had _at least_ hoped for a jaw-drop. "Go on."

"What, that gets no response at all? I would think you'd be at least a small bit surprised or awed."

"Nope," Alphonse said flippantly, grinning at whatever memory he was seemingly recalling. "Should have seen the _last_ prince we met. You seem way more like a princely sort than Ling ever did. We found him passed out on a street begging for food, he skipped out on the bill, and faked not speaking Amestrian when people got mad at him. Pretty sure he got arrested for illegal entry into Amestris, too."

Loki didn't have much of a response to that. Humans were some of the most bizarre creatures he'd ever interacted with.

"Anyway, keep going," Alphonse said when Loki said nothing.

"…Right. My brother was set to inherit the throne, and as anyone with _eyes_ could see _,_ which seemed to be just _our mother and I,_ he was not at all prepared to take on such responsibility. I sabotaged his coronation in an attempt to prove so to the king, and in a series of escalating events Thor and I fought, I was disowned by Odin – the man who claimed to be my father, when in reality I was kidnapped as an infant – and I fell off the bridge. Are you happy now?" Loki realized he was avoiding looking directly at Alphonse and rectified that immediately, then regretted it. Alphonse looked terribly upset, though not with Loki.

"That's awful," he said, and it sounded like he truly meant it. "What a horrible father. I can't imagine how hard it's been for you. And this was just before you came here? You've been dealing with that this whole time?"

Loki searched for any trace of pity in Alphonse's expression. Honestly, if he found any he'd walk right out of the room, even in these hideous garments (they were _pink_ – the gall of that doctor) they'd put him in, and he wouldn't return. Pity was one thing Loki did not see – sadness, empathy and anger yes, but not pity. He relaxed marginally. "I haven't had much time to dwell on it. Not after I learned about the Stone's presence here."

Alphonse nodded, but he clearly wished to ask for more. Loki stepped in with another question before he could. "I've told you my recent past. Now, how about yours? All of you have been frustratingly vague about the war two years ago – don't even attempt to deny it, the evidence is everywhere and don't think I fail to pick up on your attempts to 'get one past me' – and in any case, it may have some relevance to how the Mind Stone even ended up in Amestris." It was much more likely the Stone ended up slipping through the cracks when Loki went through the Gate, but that would involve far too much explanation. Besides, he'd been digging for this information for months now and it would make this so much easier if Alphonse talked.

"I guess you should know, anyway," Alphonse agreed, almost no hesitance in his tone. He'd already been _planning_ to give this information out, then. That was easier than expected, but Loki was hardly going to complain. "It's a really long story and I'm not sure where I should start, but chronologically it started in a country called Xerxes around four hundred years ago."

The more Alphonse talked, the better the fragments of Loki's knowledge fit together. The odd shape of the country he'd noticed when he first looked at a map. The signs of damage still visible in the city despite widespread repair efforts. The supposed nightmare of that patron in the bar. The sudden death or arrest of most of the military upper echelon. The strange gaps of information in the library, only recently starting to be filled. That bizarre dome he'd passed out in when he'd first arrived in Amestris.

Why Loki hadn't seen Edward, the supposed child prodigy in alchemy _use_ his famed talents, not even once.

If Loki was anyone else, he suspected he would have found Alphonse's account of Amestris's history rather unbelievable. An entire people sacrificed for the benefit of an individual? Immortal beings? Legendary stones that came at great cost?

Par for the course in Loki's reality.

Alphonse was fidgeting, looking at Loki expectantly. Loki drummed his unburned fingers on his knee before speaking. It was obvious the boy wished to hear what Loki had to say. "I admit, it's a much more impressive tale than I expected."

"I'm a little surprised you believed it so fast," Alphonse admitted with a slight grin. "Though it sounds like you have a pretty interesting past yourself, especially with that whole Mind Stone and all."

"To put it mildly."

"So, I know you've been questioned to death about this, but do you really not remember anything more about your human transmutation? Your dad… he didn't force you to, did he?"

"He didn't," Loki said, frowning at the mere thought of that man. Not that the All Father wouldn't stoop to such measures if it suited him. "Like I've said repeatedly, to all of you, I do not know how I ended up in Truth's domain. I was there, he sent me through the door, and I woke up in someone's basement on a human transmutation circle, not that I recognized it at the time."

He glanced back at Alphonse, startled to see a stricken expression on the boy's face. Alphonse licked his lips, opened his mouth to say something, but cut it off almost immediately. Loki narrowed his eyes. "What is it?" he said.

"You… wait, hold on a second. Was this around… three, four months ago?"

Damn it. He knew about that house? Backtracking was going to look suspicious now. "Yes, it was," Loki said.

"And, uh, did you happen to, well, kill a guy there?" Alphonse was stammering a little, looking like he was dreading the answer.

Well, _Hel_. Loki had completely forgotten about that gun-toting coward he'd shot. He still had the scar on his arm and ear from the man's poor aim (it was point blank – by the Norns, anyone with a gun should know how to shoot accurately from that sort of range. Pathetic).

"I think we're done here," Loki said smoothly, standing up as if his body wasn't screaming at him over the strain. Denying it wasn't going to convince Alphonse. Better to say nothing and still have the defense of plausible deniability – they clearly didn't have much evidence on their side, considering how shocked Alphonse seemed, and now all they truly had was an offhand reference he'd made. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'd like to get changed and _leave_."

"Right," Alphonse said weakly. "Uh, good talk? I guess? I gotta go."

Wonderful. Alphonse was Loki's best chance to maintaining a decent alliance with the others, and it seemed Loki may have ruined it through a careless comment.

Loki grabbed his ruined suit despite the sharp ache of his injuries, unwilling to stay in the night clothes he was wearing. He could get a fresh one back at his tiny, dingy apartment, and he didn't want to stay in this house any longer than absolutely necessary.

This atmosphere of constant mistrust (if they didn't flat out arrest him) would only get worse when Alphonse told the others of the man Loki had killed, and he was sick of it. He had lingered far too long.


	18. Chapter 18

Chris sat ramrod straight on the cot Knox had dragged out of the attic for her. She hadn't moved for hours, looking almost like she was meditating, her eyes closed and (mercifully) hiding their unnatural color.

Roy wanted to shake her, to convince her to fight whatever forces were twisting her mind, even as he knew it wouldn't make any difference. She almost never responded to them anymore aside from that one damn question every time, glowering silently the whole time:

"Where am I?"

Right, like he was going to just tell her. None of them (aside from maybe Loki, but the guy wasn't coherent enough right now to get anything out of) understood how the hell that Mind Stone thing even worked. It shouldn't have been possible to alter a person's mind like this, and yet here they were. For all Roy knew, everyone under its control served as some sort of hivemind mentality. If that was the case and he told her where they were, then it didn't matter how well they hid – they would have given their location to the enemy on a silver platter.

They'd been holed up here for way too long without making any sort of progress. His side still ached deeply where he'd been shot, but he needed to keep moving, especially while Riza and Breda were in the hands of whatever monster was behind all of this.

"I'm going to see Grumman," Roy said to Knox, who snapped around to look at him with such a fierce glower Roy was tempted to change his mind immediately.

"Like _hell_ you are. Good god, man, you got shot only four days ago!" Knox slammed a plate down on Roy's head.

"Ow!" Roy snatched the plate from Knox's grip, glaring back at him. Damn doctor didn't have a handle on the force he put behind his physical rebukes. "You've obviously been out of the medical business way too long if hitting your patients is your standard response to any problems. Look, you can't expect me to just sit around here twiddling my thumbs with everything going on out there. I need to speak with Grumman."

"What you _need_ is more goddamn rest! You're gonna open your wounds right back up and you'll bleed out on the streets," Knox snarled.

"Would you prefer I wait until they decide to start brainwashing random citizens just to add to their numbers? There's already been at least one civilian casualty, just because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. How long before they'd get ahold of your ex-wife and son? And don't try claiming you don't care about them, Knox, I'm not an idiot."

Knox pointed at Roy with a fork. "That's a low blow, Mustang. I'd say I didn't take you for the sort, but then I'd be lying. You can go rot in a ditch for all I care, but you owe me _big_ time for everything I'm doing here for you and your pals and I can't let you die before you've paid me back. Hell, I can see the headlines already: _Mortician holds old lady captive in cellar, claims blue eyes equal brainwashing. Details on page 7._ They'd have me fucking committed."

Roy rolled his eyes, tugging the fork out of Knox's grip. He didn't trust the doctor not to stab him with it if Roy aggravated him too much. "We'll be out of your hair before you know it, I promise. And it'll go a lot faster if I can talk to Grumman and get things sorted out – he's a sitting duck with people at Halcrow's level getting brainwashed. It's way past time to declare a state of emergency in Central."

"If we're lucky you won't be needing my undertaker services, at least," Knox grumbled. "Fine, I won't stop you. But be careful out there. From what you folks've been saying, it's not exactly safe."

"Of course I'll be careful," Roy said. "Besides, it doesn't look like the brainwashing tactic even works on me. I'm sure it'll go just fine."

"Tell me that _after_ you come back without another hole in your side, please."

Roy didn't wear his uniform, instead choosing the most generic looking civilian clothing he could find in Knox's closet. It wouldn't fool anyone who knew his face, but it should at least offer some level of anonymity. His gloves were in his pocket as a precaution, obviously. He rarely went anywhere without them anymore.

He didn't allow his thoughts to drift as he hailed a cab to get to Central Headquarters, a silent and uneventful ride. He couldn't let himself get distracted, and thinking too hard about certain recent events was a surefire way to get caught up in what had already happened.

The past couldn't be changed, but he still had the chance to go back to the future he'd always envisioned for Amestris. There was no time for regrets. He needed to keep moving forward.

Something was wrong. Roy could feel it in the air, in the way officers glanced at him and then immediately averted their gazes too quickly to look casual. They didn't stop him as he walked down the hall into the secure areas, didn't even check his identification as he entered the more secure areas like they should have.

He slid his hand into his pocket, the familiar coarse material of his gloves not calming him like it usually did. He wanted to leave. It was like the halls had shifted into a place he hardly recognized, even though it made no sense. He'd been here a thousand times; he was probably just reading into things too much. It _was_ weird he'd made it all the way to Grumman's office without being stopped even once, though.

Roy slipped one glove on, just in case.

* * *

"Loki! Hey, hold on a second!"

By the Norns, Loki was never going to get out of here without being stopped by every single one of these humans. Surely Alphonse could not have told Edward about Loki's past _that_ quickly – what in Hel did he want?

Hand on the front door handle, he turned and leveled Edward with a cool glare, searching for any sign of mirth or anger. He hadn't seen Edward since he'd been dragged out of that warehouse by him, and didn't relish seeing him after that humiliating experience. He'd probably laughed about it later, about seeing Loki so degraded and pathetic. Better that Loki never saw any of them again, Edward least of all, yet here they were.

"What do you want?" Loki said, straightening slightly to draw himself up to his full height and looking down at Edward. The wound on his side protested at the stretch, but he ignored it in favor of towering even further over the boy. Edward, of course, didn't even seem to notice. He was scuffing his foot against the ground, arms folded tightly over his chest, and looking everywhere but at Loki's face.

"I just wanted to say I'm sorry," Edward ground out, grimacing like it pained him to even say it. "For treating you like some sort of villain this whole time. And being so suspicious of everything you say. Though in my defense, you act creepy as hell half the time, so you can't really blame me."

Loki's eyebrows rose in surprise. Of all things he expected Edward to say, this wasn't anywhere near the top of the list. "Excuse me?" he said, torn between disbelief and taking offense at the 'creepy' accusation. He was not _creepy_. Granted, he didn't really act like a typical human, and yes, he sometimes played it up to try to garner a reaction from one of them, and he hadn't exactly done much to mitigate their negative opinions of him…

All right, perhaps he could concede he acted a _little_ creepy at times.

"I'm trying to say I misjudged you," Edward said. "You're not all bad news like I thought. To be honest, I was pretty sure you were actually the bad guy and you were using us to get close to the military higher-ups or something, or maybe you were trying to get ahold of that mind controller thing for your own use and getting us to do the dirty work for you."

Well, Edward wasn't exactly wrong, but Loki was hardly going to say so. Especially not when even Loki seemed to be forgetting his true goals these days. "Apology accepted," Loki said, when it became clear Edward was waiting for Loki to say something.

"That's it? No 'sorry for acting like a sinister weirdo' or 'sorry for trying to trick your brother into spilling secrets' or anything like that?"

"I haven't done anything I feel the need to apologize for."

"Okay, fine," Edward said, rolling his eyes. "It's not that big of a deal anyway. Look, how about we just try to start over? It's getting really annoying being at each other's throats all the time. I'm not saying we have to be friends or anything, but as much as I hate to admit it, you're not that bad."

What Loki _wanted_ was to leave and not come back. He'd been growing soft around these humans, and it made him nervous that he was even considering Edward's offer of… something. A more amicable relationship at the very least. First Alphonse, now Edward. Was Loki having some sort of detailed hallucination courtesy of his head injury? He half expected to see Mustang come through the door and profess a heartfelt desire for camaraderie or something equally ludicrous.

This was dangerous, and not in the physical sense. Loki kept others at a distance for a reason – they would change their minds instantly if they knew what he'd truly done in the past. Their loyalties were to each other, not to him, never to him. He was only tricking himself if he allowed himself to think otherwise. There was plenty of empirical evidence to support this belief. Only Frigga had ever truly been on his side, and after finding out about the circumstances surrounding his infancy Loki sometimes doubted even that. Thor... well. Loki was never quite certain when it came to Thor.

Loki couldn't allow mere mortals to have any sway over his mind. He needed to hold fast to his own superiority (he had to believe he was superior, or what was he truly?) and not forget his origins. In sticking near to the Elrics and Madame Christmas and the other girls in the bar (and even Mustang, loathe as he was to admit it) he was beginning to adapt to being human.

Yet the offer was tempting. Thor's friends had always accused Loki of being weak, and just how correct they were was starting to become clear. _Loki_ , of _Asgard_ , was finding the idea of human companionship not only tolerable but desirable to some extent.

Oh, if Odin could see him now. He would be so disappointed. It almost made him wish to make human friends just to spite him.

"See, this is what I mean about acting creepy," Edward said, breaking Loki out of his thoughts. Elric was glaring at him, his fingers tapping against his arm in obvious annoyance. "You, just standing there all silent and brooding and staring at me like I'm an oasis in a desert but also the antichrist. Like, you should get a job as an interrogator, because you've got the whole 'staring into your very soul' look down like nothing I've ever seen. Fucking hell, I don't know why I even bothered with this. Sorry for wasting your time or whatever." Edward turned to leave, his shoulders slumping just slightly, and Loki spoke before he could stop himself.

"Wait."

Edward glanced back at Loki again, his brows raised in expectation. "Well? Just come out and say it."

"I suppose… I would be amenable to your suggestion." Oh, Hel, Loki was making a mistake.

He was showing his weakness.

Edward cracked a smile, his stiff posture relaxing considerably. "I guess that's the best I can hope for. I'll take it. Glad to have you on our side, Loki."

Edward left, and as his footsteps faded in the distance Loki finally made his escape.

Everything hurt – he wasn't nearly healed enough to be walking around as if nothing was wrong, but he couldn't stay in that house any longer. He needed space and time to think, alone and away from the ones causing all this uncertainty in his head.

He'd seen the Mind Stone, right there in front of him. It was real and it was most definitely here, and he'd failed to acquire it. He'd become weak. It was a small comfort it was a rather distinctive item. But how pathetic had Loki allowed himself to become here? How… human?

The line between his Jotun (or Aesir – it wasn't entirely clear even to himself anymore) form and his human self was getting more and more muddied over time. It had already been over three months since Loki had landed in Amestris and he'd lost somewhere around 15 years of his lifespan accordingly, yet that didn't alarm him as much as it should have. He'd never really believed he'd reach old age, not with the dangerous sort of games he tended to play, but he was risking losing centuries if he lingered here too long. He'd already surpassed Thor in physical age by now.

Loki didn't fit in on Asgard. He never had. He'd always been different and looked down upon for it, no matter what he did or didn't do. He'd never truly belonged.

But Loki didn't belong here either. He wasn't truly human, as much as his current physiology said he was; he'd already lived over a millennium. Human lives were fleeting and brief, an explosion over before even a hundred years had passed. They weren't remotely comparable

And that's what they were: an eruption. They lived for such a short time yet accomplished so much more than an Asgardian might have in the same time frame, building on each other's successes and failures and evolving at a rapid-fire pace like nothing he'd ever witnessed before. They made every moment of life they _did_ have count to progress in a way Asgardians never did (and why would they need to? They had over five thousand years to live – there was no rush).

The feeling of superiority Loki had held onto for so long was beginning to crumble despite his best efforts to hold onto it.

And perhaps it wasn't such a bad thing. Odin had seemed to believe it, after all, and nowadays Loki wasn't putting much stock in anything Odin had held as true. That sentiment was still up in the air, though.

It took far too long to get himself all the way over to his hovel of an apartment. Every step aggravated the hole in his side; the sun in his eyes made his head pound badly enough his heartbeat filled his hearing; the scratchy fabric of his jacket irritated the edges of his arm where the bandages didn't quite cover his burns. He could feel the sideways glances people were giving him, and although his clothing was stifling in the midday heat Loki was very glad he mostly wore dark material. They likely would have called law enforcement on him if they'd been able to see the blood (both dried and fresh) staining them.

But the humans he'd left behind wouldn't find Loki here, not easily. Almost no one knew where he'd been staying and he'd been taking care to keep it that way – leaving early in the morning before the city woke up and coming back late at night where the shield of darkness helped keep him anonymous.

He never had to go back. He never had to deal with Mustang or the Elrics again. He'd seen the scepter, he could go find it on his own, he could finish the search without them.

It might take a little longer, but it was safer than allowing himself to form any sort of attachment, mild as it might be. If it came down to it, he had to be sure he wouldn't hesitate to put himself above them at all costs. None of them were worth putting his life or future on the line, and despite Edward and Alphonse's niceties he had no doubt they would leave him in the dust if they believed it advantageous.

The room seemed emptier and more claustrophobic than it ever had before.

* * *

Loki had been gone for a total of 42 hours before he found himself standing back outside the house he'd been so desperate to escape from not even two days earlier. He truly was pathetic if his resolve was this weakened.

There were so many ways he could justify this. _The odds of succeeding increased exponentially with allies. They have access to additional resources he did not. He was still injured and would be at a massive disadvantage if he was found before he was ready while he was alone._

 _…He was lonely._

When it came down to it, that was essentially the crux of the problem. Loki was, for all intents and purposes, _lonely_. Loki had gotten used to the presence of other people (against his will, mind) and the utter solitude now surrounding him sat like a heavy weight in his chest. He didn't even have his job to return to, not with the bar compromised.

(Were the girls there all right? Had they all ended up the same as Madame Christmas, or had they somehow made their escape? Were they continuing on, business as usual, as if no one had gone missing? Had Mustang intervened for them?)

He should leave. He should turn around now, before anyone saw him, before he let himself make this mistake.

Naturally, the door opened before he could change his mind and he was yanked into the house without fanfare.

"Where the _hell_ have you been?" Edward hissed, slamming the door shut and sliding the deadbolt on.

"I had things to do that did not involve sitting in a bed twiddling my thumbs," Loki snapped. Regret was already settling in.

"Whatever, I don't give a fuck as long as you didn't track anyone back here. Fucking hell, man, do you even know what happened? No, of course you don't, because you left before we could fucking tell you!"

"What are you blabbering on about? Don't go wasting your breath."

Edward glared at him, though the expression was laced with a hint of uncharacteristic fear. "Mustang went to talk to the Fuhrer a couple days ago to try to keep General Halcrow from spreading that stone's control any further, especially since they're getting civilians involved. But he was too late. Fuhrer Grumman's been compromised."


	19. Chapter 19

"We're in deep shit," Edward said.

"I think we're all aware," Mustang muttered, his hand flexing over his side where he'd been shot in the warehouse. "We need to focus on what we can do at this point, before our options become even more limited."

They'd all congregated in Knox's pitiable excuse of a living room, piles of books and trash balanced precariously on every available surface. Loki was primly perched on the edge of the dusty couch (and this man called himself a doctor? Even the slum doctor's hovel had been cleaner than this) while Edward was carelessly sprawled back next to him. Mustang and Alphonse had cleared off chairs for their impromptu meeting.

"They're already pretty damn limited," Edward said pointedly. He tipped his head back over the edge of the sofa. "What with the _warrants_ for our _arrests_ they just put out after your bright idea to go to Grumman."

Mustang ignored Edward's jab, his tired but intense gaze focusing on Loki. Mustang certainly looked worse for wear, though how much was from their earlier fight versus his altercation at Central Command was hard to tell. There was a bandage plastered to the side of his head and a faint smell of smoke wafting from him. "And where the hell have you been the last couple of days? I got back here and they told me you'd left without saying anything."

Loki looked back at him scathingly. "I needed to think, away from you people. Your extended company is exhausting."

"So you were off playing hooky for two days while things went to shit, good to know," Edward said sharply. His fingers were tapping a restless pattern on the couch's arm.

Loki chanced a glance at Alphonse, who sat slightly apart from the rest of them. He was studiously avoiding looking in Loki's direction, radiating guilt in hunched shoulders and tightly clenched fists shoved under his legs. He'd told them, then. Loki wasn't surprised, or even upset, really. He had expected that outcome from the beginning, though exactly how much Alphonse had told them remained to be seen. Strange that they had failed to so much as mention it so far. Then again, there _were_ much more pressing concerns on their minds for the moment. If things went as planned Loki wouldn't be around much longer for them to arrest him regardless.

The thought of leaving shouldn't make him feel regret. Clearly he was ill. It must be the drugs they'd given him. Two days ago.

"You misunderstand," Loki said quietly. Edward must have noticed something in his tone, because he didn't press further.

"Putting that behind us," Edward said, "we need a plan for how we're gonna move forward from here."

"The most important thing right now is to find a way to reverse the Stone's effects," Mustang said. He was staring pointedly at Loki. "Otherwise almost anything else we can do is pointless. The last thing we want is a massacre on our hands."

"And how do you propose we figure that out?" Loki said, annoyed. He thought they'd gotten past this by now. "I've told you already, I don't know how to reverse it. How many more times must I repeat this before you finally believe it?"

"I do believe it," Mustang replied. "But it doesn't change the fact that we have to find some sort of solution before this gets even worse than it already has. We have someone in our custody that might hold the key to this mystery. We need to get her to talk."

"Are you proposing torturing her?" Loki said, incredulous. He'd utilized more… aggressive interrogation techniques in the past, but he hadn't expected _Mustang_ to be the one to suggest it. Especially not if Loki was correct in believing them to be related.

The fact that Loki did not want to inflict pain on Madame Christmas was inconsequential. Edward and Alphonse would not stand for this, even if Mustang really was willing to go to such lengths.

" _No_ ," Mustang snapped. He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. "But she seemed to recognize you, Laufeyson, beyond whatever connections to her you've formed recently. We need to know whatever she's learned after being brainwashed. She spoke to you more than any of us back at that warehouse. Try talking to her, see if you can get something out of her. It can't hurt to try."

Yes, it could, but Mustang didn't seem to understand the implications of what Madame Christmas had suggested back there. Whoever the master of the Stone was, they knew who Loki was, where he'd come from. They almost certainly knew what he'd done to land himself here. He'd told Alphonse some of it, but there was so much more to that story he'd glossed over.

He did not want that information getting out.

"On one condition," he said, folding his hands together. "I do it alone. No one else in the room, no one listening in."

"That's ridiculous," Mustang said. "I can't just trust you with her alone like that."

"You said I was your best chance at restoring her to her right mind."

"That's _not_ what I said. Why do you need to talk to her alone?"

"Because we still don't trust each other fully," Loki said calmly, "and she knows it. She will try to turn us against each other if she believes she can do so." It wasn't the most critical reason, but it was the likely end result. Better that Mustang believed she would lie.

"I'll stand outside of the door," Mustang said in an attempt to compromise. "I won't be able to hear much unless there's a problem."

"At the end of the hall," Loki said.

"That's too far away."

"Then it seems we are at an impasse."

"God, just stand at the end of the damn hall, Roy," Edward moaned. "I'm sick of all this bickering all the time. It's like hanging out with toddlers."

"You're the cause of plenty of arguments yourself," Mustang reminded him.

"Whatever. Look, if anyone starts yelling you'll be able to hear it from the end of the hall. It isn't even long. I just want this all to be over with, and if that means trusting Tall, Dark and Creepy over there then so be it."

Mustang threw his hands in the air, grimacing as the movement pulled on his wounds. "Fine. But at the first sound that anything's wrong I'm coming in anyway."

"Thank you," Loki said, and he wanted to slap himself for allowing so much sincerity seep into the words.

* * *

Alphonse had a theory.

Thing was, there were a lot of little things that seemed out of place or just plain _wrong_. On their own he could have justified them, because people have quirks, they say the wrong thing, they've got differing opinions on stuff and sometimes those opinions were weird or extreme. As fascinating as psychology was it was a really imprecise area of study. They'd only even started considering it a science a couple decades ago, after all.

But there were only so many of those little things Al could dismiss before he got suspicious, and that point had passed a while ago.

Al was the one out of him, Ed and Mustang who had known Loki for the shortest amount of time. Sure, he spent more time with him nowadays than the others did, but still. It seemed like Loki was becoming more normal the longer he spent time with them, so there had to be some stuff he'd missed on seeing.

And that was hint number one, right there. As stand-offish as Loki was most of the time, he seemed a lot _less_ weird than he had around the first time he'd met him. Not including the very first time he'd met him, because there Loki was putting up a (pretty convincing) front, while now it didn't seem like he was putting much effort into one at all.

It didn't seem like it was nothing but cultural differences. If Al hadn't seen Loki bleeding the same as any other human he would have suspected him of being a homunculus, honestly. There was this sort of disconnect in Loki's behavior that reminded him a lot of Greed, where the lines between humanity and inhumanity were blurred and indistinct. He seemed to alternate between a total lack of empathy and a sudden burst of it, like something had just shifted in his mind.

Suspicious-circumstance-number-two was the fact that the Mind Stone even existed, and that tied in with hint three: Loki's knowledge of something no one else had ever heard of.

Loki talked about the Mind Stone like Amestrians talked about the Philosopher's Stone. He'd made several references to legends in his culture surrounding this stone and several others (presumably equally powerful, and wasn't that a terrifying thought?). Sure, he obviously didn't come from Amestris and would know about things they didn't, but this was way beyond anything Al could reasonably explain even within his most liberal outlook on the world.

Al had been racking his brain and the library's extensive alchemic texts for a way the Mind Stone could even work. He'd bounced theories off Ed, who was just as clueless as Al on the mechanics. They were both considered accomplished alchemists, some of the best in the country taking their ages into consideration, and neither of them had any idea how the Mind Stone could possibly do what it did. Nothing. Nilch. Nada. They barely knew anything about the brain or the mind, much less how to change it. If it was even possible, it was decades, probably centuries ahead of what they were capable of now. It was like something straight out of a fantasy novel.

It wasn't alchemy.

This was something different.

Ed wasn't convinced, but it's really the only thing that made sense to Al. _"It's probably another type of alchemy, like alkahestry,"_ Ed had said. But in the fight against General Halcrow, there hadn't been any sign of alchemic processes occurring whenever he used that staff. Surely Asgard couldn't be that much more advanced than every other country around.

Loki, for all his skill, didn't actually seem that used to using alchemy, either. He was familiar with the Mind Stone but acted like he'd only been using alchemy for a little while. It was obvious in Loki's movements that he was highly trained, probably had been fighting for years, and it was so ingrained in him there was no way it was new. But his use of alchemy? It was sporadic, like he had to remind himself to use it. It was totally different from the way Ed used to fight, back when he could still use his alchemy. It had come as naturally as breathing to Ed (and himself, too), who'd combined alchemy with martial arts to create his own sort of fighting style hard for anyone but combat alchemists or homunculi to keep up with.

Al had also pored over every map in the library to try to find Asgard. It hadn't been all that surprising when he found nothing about it. Sure, Amestris's information about the outside world was kind of limited, but as far as he'd seen through his and Ed's travels the maps were pretty damn accurate. Either Loki had been lying again (and Al couldn't discount that possibility – it seemed almost ingrained in the man to lie about stuff) or it might be time to consider some of their more far-fetched theories.

Namely, one Mustang had half-heartedly come up with during their investigation into Leonard Moore and the activated human transmutation circle in his basement.

That something may have been pulled through the transmutation circle from another source.

Hell, it sounded ridiculous just thinking it. There was only one array Al had ever known to transport living beings from one location to another, and it looked way different than a human transmutation circle did. It didn't make any _sense._

At the same time, it would explain a lot. Loki's reference to others as _humans_ , as if he himself wasn't one. His lack of knowledge or understanding about basic customs. His accent, different from anything Al had ever heard from other countries or dialects. Loki's uncertainty of how he'd arrive in Amestris. How he didn't seem to have lost anything for seeing Truth, when even Mustang had lost his eyesight.

Al wanted to bring it up with Ed, but he had a feeling his theory would be dismissed pretty quickly. And he wouldn't blame Ed, either. It was disturbing to think that there might be whole other worlds out there that they didn't know about. But it wasn't like there was a complete lack of evidence for it – the existence of Truth spoke to that, as did Ed and Ling's accidental trip into Gluttony's artificial Gate of Truth.

Al also had a feeling the understanding he'd gained from Truth was helping him towards this theory. Out of all the living people who'd seen Truth, he'd paid the highest toll and seen the most as a result. There was _so much_ out there he could never hope to fully comprehend.

He wished Hohenheim was still alive to ask. He'd known more about this sort of thing than anyone else, and even though Al had never had the chance to get to know his dad he'd always longed for he had a feeling Hohenheim wouldn't have just written off even the weirdest theory Al could come up with.

Al knew Loki believed Al had told Ed and Mustang about Loki's suspected involvement with that dead alchemist, Moore. At least he didn't seem upset, not noticeably. Al had expected him to be glaring daggers, not sitting there all passively like most of his aggression had taken a vacation. It made what he was about to do easier.

Because he hadn't told them yet. He planned to, obviously. There was no way he could just keep that to himself forever. But when Loki had left and Mustang came back with the news about Grumman, it just seemed… less important. Not urgent, at least. Al hadn't been sure Loki would ever come back, and it hadn't made any sense to turn Loki's involvement with Moore into a huge source of dispute when there were much more pressing things to worry about.

But it was weighing on his mind more and more the longer he waited. He needed to tell Ed, at the very least. Ed could tell Mustang if he thought they needed to in a while.

Later, once he could catch him alone, he'd let Loki know that the details of his past were still private. He felt bad enough breaking confidence to tell the others about Moore, especially considering the major trust issues the guy seemed to have, but hopefully he'd understand. If he didn't, so be it – Al didn't regret his choice. He wouldn't. Couldn't. He trusted Ed more than he'd ever trusted anyone else. He couldn't just hold back stuff from his _brother_.

Loki was leaving with Mustang, probably to talk to the brainwashed lady they had locked up upstairs, and Al stopped Ed from following with a hand on his arm. Ed sat back down, eyeing Al quizzically. Al shook his head almost imperceptively.

"What's wrong?" Ed asked the moment Mustang and Loki were out of earshot.

"Before you get mad, I promise I was planning to tell you before Loki got back," Al started, fingers digging into the rough couch fabric. Ed's brow furrowed.

"Tell me what?"

"Just hear me out before you go charging up there, okay?"

"Tell me _what_?"

"I think Loki killed Moore."

" _What?_ " Ed shot to his feet, already looking towards the hall. Al grabbed his arm and yanked him back onto the couch.

"I told you to hear me out!"

"How do you even know that? Why didn't you say anything sooner? Two days! You had two days to say something before he came back, why did you wait?"

 _Because he's finally opening up to us. Because you wouldn't believe me if I told you what I_ really _think happened. Because I was scared, and Loki's our best chance at making this nightmare finally end._

Al hadn't wanted to get dragged into another fight. He hadn't wanted any of this, but life wasn't fair, was it? He wanted nothing more than to just walk away and be done with it all. Maybe go back to Xing, see May again, find some semblance of peace and happiness in his life. Instead he was here, in a cramped house with the blinds drawn and a warrant on his head, wondering if he was going to live past seventeen or if he and Ed were destined to die in a war most people didn't even know was going on.

Loki knew things. Al wasn't sure how much he could trust the guy – he wasn't throwing all his caution out the window – but they were way over their heads here. Al's body wasn't exactly invulnerable anymore and Ed didn't have his alchemy. Mustang was strong enough that he had a chance, but he didn't know any more than the rest of them what it was they were up against and would probably have to resort to killing everyone who'd been brainwashed. Loki? He was their trump card. The enemy clearly wanted him on their side or dead. He was the key to what was happening, and they couldn't afford to chase him away.

"Loki mentioned something about him! I needed to be sure before I said anything, because I _knew_ you'd go confront him the moment I told you. Ed, think about it. Remember how weird that case was? How much didn't line up? You said that human transmutation circle had been activated, but Moore hadn't done it. Loki's seen Truth. Don't you think he might have been the one to use it?"

Ed studied Al, jaw twitching like he wanted to say something but wasn't sure how to say it. Al pressed on.

"We don't know what happened in there, but I don't think we should be accusing Loki of stuff right now or he'll just leave again. We need him, Ed."

"No, we fucking don't."

"Yeah, we _do_. He's our best shot at getting out of this alive! Whether or not we can trust him, we can't afford to lose his support. We need _everyone_ who's seen Truth, because we're the only ones we know can't be brainwashed. We need Teacher too, if we can get ahold of her."

Ed was silent. Al sat back slightly, watching him closely, and he knew he'd won the moment Ed slumped over and put his face in his hand.

"Fine. Fine, I'll let this go for now," Ed grumbled. "But only because Moore didn't exactly seem like a stand-up guy either."

"Are you mad?"

"At you?"

"Yeah."

"…No, I'm not, Al. Thanks for telling me."

Al grinned, and Ed's lips quirked up in response. "Of course I told you," Al said, pulling Ed into a hug. "I trust you more than anyone else." He buried his face in Ed's neck, breathing in his brother's familiar smell of oil and sweat. Ed let him like he always did even though he wasn't very tactile, because he understood just how much Al craved touch.

Al didn't know what he'd do without Ed.


	20. Chapter 20

A/N - I wanted to express again just how much everyone's support for this fic has meant to me. Thank you so much for all your reviews! I hope you enjoy this next chapter!

* * *

Loki wasn't sure what he'd expected going into the room they were holding Madame Christmas in.

This wasn't it.

He hardly recognized the woman. Her ever-present bold makeup was gone, leaving dark bags under her crystalline blue eyes and a sallow skin tone. She was wearing loose-fitting, plain clothing instead of a low-cut dress. Her injured wrist – the one he'd shot – had been wrapped in bandages. The room itself was bare, containing only a cot and two rickety chairs by a small table. Calling her Madame Christmas seemed unfitting in her current state.

"Madame," he said in way of greeting, inclining his head slightly. Putting her on edge right away did not seem a smart way to begin this conversation, as much as he'd prefer not to have it at all. He dragged out the second chair to sit across from her.

"If it ain't the fallen prince," she said. Loki stiffened minutely before forcing himself to relax. She could read subtle facial and body cues like almost no one he'd ever met – he couldn't afford to allow himself the slightest slip. He crossed a leg over his knee, clasping his hands together as calmly and regally as he could.

She knew. She'd alluded to it earlier, yes, but her vague statement of ' _who you really are'_ could have referred to any number of things. He hadn't been certain it was anything more than a bluff. Now, there was no doubt.

Whoever had control over the Mind Stone, they weren't from Amestris or any other country around here. They almost certainly weren't human. But he couldn't think of any in Asgard either who would use these subtle tactics – if it was an Asgardian they would have come in with weapons blazing. The Mind Stone had been lost millennia ago, somewhere in the universe beyond the Nine Realms. His adversary was completely unknown to Loki. He would not get a name easily, but a name was hardly the most important factor. Motivations, allegiances, principles – those he could use.

"You've heard of me," he said. "I would ask who your allegiance belongs to, that they would know of my identity, but I believe it would be a waste of my time to even try."

A hint of her familiar smirk appeared. "You're as much a smartass as ever," she mused, "just with a swankier title. Well. Former title."

Loki didn't rise to the bait, even as his stomach dropped. Had he been disowned, then? He'd half been expecting it. But he hadn't come here to discuss his past; there was more than one reason he'd insisted on coming in alone. "I'm to trick you into telling me how to undo your hypnosis."

Madame Christmas's eyes narrowed. "Why're you tellin' me that? Counterproductive, don't ya think?"

"Because I don't care," Loki stated. Like he'd predicted, she leaned forward, clearly intrigued.

"Yeah? Then what're you after?"

"Cooperation. You see," Loki spread his hands, palms up, "I don't believe your master truly cares about Amestris. About conquering it. It's an inconsequential world with equally inconsequential humans living in it, what does someone as mighty as they are have need of it? I know they must be powerful – no average individual could hope to wield the power of an Infinity Stone."

"What does that have to do with anythin'?" Suspicion colored her words, but she wasn't closing herself off. He'd gotten her attention.

"It doesn't belong here," he said. "Doesn't your master wish to have it returned to them? I imagine they would come after it, but this is a pocket dimension of some sort. Impenetrable, sealed by an unknown entity. No way to use the Stone to its full potential. No way to retrieve it."

"Your point?"

"I can get it back," he said softly. "I got myself here, did I not? With the Stone, I can transport myself and it back into our universe. I have the confidence of the resistance here; they won't even _think_ to stop me in time. I have all the knowledge you're seeking and more."

The fact that he'd hardly ended up here of his own volition was unimportant. This was it. If he could trick them into giving him the Stone, he could make a deal with Truth and get himself out of here. Amestris would be set to rights as well, its people (aside from those who had died – there was nothing to be done for them) returned to normal. Well, likely not, but he could hardly be blamed for that. Not that he cared, of course. He didn't. What did the fates of these humans matter to him?

She gave Loki a considering look, obviously looking for any sign of deception. She wouldn't find one. Everything he'd said was true, after all.

"What's to say you won't just turn on him? You don't go gettin' nicknames like 'the God of Lies' for no reason. What's to stop you from just takin' it for yourself?" she said.

"I have no interest in the Infinity Stones," Loki said, his tone as neutral and bored as he could make it. "I prefer the use of my own magic over foreign powers. I have no need of it."

"And _why_ should I believe that?"

"Do you really have any other choice?" he murmured. "I guarantee you, you will not find another way to get back the Stone. I am the only one capable of using seidr here. I have no wish to use it, I assure you."

Her unnerving gaze held. Manicured nails tapped slowly on her knee. A hint of a smirk ghosted on her face. "There's the lie."

He didn't move. "What, pray tell, do you believe I'm lying about?"

"Your magic's gone," she said. "You haven't been usin' it. You want the Stone to make up for it, yeah? Or are ya gonna try to get it back usin' the Stone?"

"You don't know what you're talking about," he said, his tone sharpening.

"I think I do," she replied. "Am I gettin' to you? Doesn't take much to set ya off, does it? You wanna know what they're doin' over in Asgard? _Celebratin'_. No one's got any tears for _you_ , Loki Laufeyson."

"Shut up," he hissed, digging his nails into his palms. His chest was tight, his breaths heavier as he forced himself not to retaliate. This wasn't her speaking. She was probably lying in the first place. And even if she wasn't, what did he care? He hated Odin. He hated all of them. Their opinion of him meant nothing.

"Except, callin' yourself _Laufeyson_ ain't really true either, is it?" she mused, seemingly unconcerned. "You're _no one's_ son. Odin's disowned you. Jotunheim wants you dead. Even your magic's gone."

" _Shut up!_ " he yelled. "You know nothing!"

"And you've _got_ nothin'," she said. There was pity in her eyes.

That was what did it. She looked at him and saw someone pathetic, miserable, lonely.

And she pitied him for it.

He barely registered the door opening behind him. He snapped forward, hand grasping her hair, and slammed her head onto the table. Madame Christmas tried to jerk out of his grip, blood already streaming from her forehead where the table edge had caught it. She glared dazedly at him, eyes flickering between bright blue and green.

Green.

Strong, gloved hands grabbed his arm and tried to pull him back, yelling indeterminable over the static in his ears. He held his ground, letting go of her hair just to lay a hard punch across her temple.

His rage bled out through the broken skin on his knuckles. A second pair of hands yanked on his other arm and he was unceremoniously dragged out of the room into the hall by Mustang and Edward. Al and Knox pushed past them into the room, the door closing and blocking Madame Christmas's prone form from sight.

"What the hell was that?" Mustang seethed, his low, deadly tone drawing Loki's attention better than any amount of shouting could have. His hand tightened even more around Loki's arm.

"Goddamn it, Loki, what the hell is wrong with you?" Edward snapped.

"Unhand me," Loki hissed, though he didn't dare use physical force against Mustang. Not while the brigadier general was in this sort of mood – getting burned once had been once too many. The last thing Loki wished to instigate was a repeat performance.

A muscle in Mustang's jaw ticked, the fingers on his free hand rubbing together in a dangerous promise. A bluff? It was hard to tell. Mustang was very good at making himself difficult to read. "I thought you'd have enough common sense to not screw this up, but apparently even an inch of trust is too much to ask –"

"I believe I've found a way to undo the hypnosis," Loki interrupted impatiently, doing his best to reign himself back in and calm down, tamping down his instinct to rile them up. Some of the cold fury in Mustang's expression faded.

"Explain," he said.

"Her eyes," Loki said. "They reverted to her normal color for a moment when I hit her. Tell that doctor to check if they're still blue."

"What, so all it takes is a hard knock to the head?" Edward said, his eyebrows raising in disbelief.

"It was worth a try," Loki sniffed, as if his assault on Madame Christmas had been a calculated move and not a momentary loss of control. Mustang let go of Loki's arm, shoving him back as he did so.

"I can't decide if you're suicidal or just monumentally reckless," he said. "You still haven't healed from the last time I burned you. Stop keeping us in the dark like this." He didn't wait for a response, heading into the room they'd been holding Madame Christmas in and leaving Loki alone in the hall with Edward.

"You're fucking insane," Edward said, folding his arms over his chest. He was staring at Loki like he wasn't sure what to make of him.

Loki didn't respond right away. It felt like something was clamped around his throat, turning his relief of finding a way to undo the hypnosis into slow-burning dread. Who knew how much Madame Christmas would remember? The Stone's master had told her so much about him, and he held no illusion that she would keep his secrets when Mustang was the one asking.

"I should leave," he muttered. Edward scoffed and stepped between him and the staircase.

"No way you're leaving now," he said. "You do know we're not stupid enough to think you only knocked her out to see if it would undo the brainwashing, right? We could hear you yelling from downstairs."

"Does it matter?" Loki said, a hint of tiredness creeping into his voice. By the Nine, he was tired of this. Tired of fighting, of constantly keeping himself on edge, of the suspicion, of the power struggle he'd been playing ever since he'd walked into Mustang's office six weeks earlier.

For once in his life, he was sick of playing these games.

"Depends," Edward said. "You weren't trying to kill her, right?"

"Of course not," Loki snapped. "If I wished to kill her, then she would be dead right now."

"Yeah, I figured," Edward said with a nod. "So what did she say that made you so mad?"

"It doesn't bear repeating," Loki said wearily, ready to tell Edward off if the young man began to pry too much further. There was no proof anything Madame Christmas had said while under the Stone's control was true. And what did it matter to him if it was? He'd already renounced the surname of Odinson, what did it matter if Odin chose to disown him? He already knew Jotunheim wanted nothing more than to see him dead after his betrayal of their king. Nothing Madame Christmas claimed should have any impact on Loki.

And yet it was like a cleaver was stuck in his chest. What she'd said made sense, true or not. It reminded him of exactly why it had been such an easy decision to let go of Thor back on that bridge, back when he'd thought the fall would kill him. He'd always been the outcast, the one who lived in the shadow of their golden prince. He was the one who used magic even when his masculinity was called into question because of it, the one who was framed as a liar and a cheater because he didn't favor brute-force techniques in battle. He was a stain in Odin's lineage. Of course they would find his apparent death a boon.

(He wondered if they'd felt the same sense of relief after Hela's banishment. If there were others he didn't know of who'd died or been exiled or otherwise gone 'missing.')

It took Loki longer than he'd admit to realize Edward wasn't pushing, or saying anything at all in response to Loki's refusal to share Madame Christmas's words. A small bloom of gratitude sprung up before he could quash it completely. Edward had turned away as if to give Loki an extra layer of privacy, superficial as it might be, chewing on his bottom lip in an obvious effort to restrain himself from blurting something out. Knowing him, it was most likely tactless.

So Loki was startled when Edward finally spoke, in a much quieter tone than he'd expected. "It's happened to me before. The whole 'being provoked into attacking someone' thing, I mean. There was… there was a man. A State Alchemist that I met when I was fifteen, while Al and I were looking for a way to get our bodies back. He specialized in chimeras – made the first ever talking one."

Chimeras. Loki recalled reading about them in alchemic texts, back during his intensive studying in the public libraries. They were the subject of a subfield of bio-alchemy: the combining of two or more genetically distinct creatures to form a hybrid organism. There was an equivalent magical branch of study, though he knew very little about it. He hadn't read much about the alchemic version, either, deeming it irrelevant to his goals.

He'd never heard of a chimera that could speak a human tongue. If Edward's discomfort was any indication, there was a good reason why not. The boy's ordinarily tan complexion had paled considerably; he was swallowing thickly and rubbing his right shoulder absently. Loki had a sinking feeling this was a story with a very negative conclusion. Alphonse hadn't mentioned anything about it while he'd been recounting their past to Loki earlier, and he'd been fairly thorough. Whatever had happened, it was bad enough that Alphonse hadn't wanted to talk about it even in passing.

"He was about to fail his yearly examination to decide if he could stay a State Alchemist, so he…" Edward stopped, his voice cutting off like he was being strangled, before forcing himself to continue. "He used his daughter Nina and her dog to transmute another talking chimera. He'd used his wife to make the first one. I know I'm short-tempered, but I never kill, right? I don't think I could live with myself if I actually killed anyone. But Tucker? You goddamn bet I wanted to kill him right then. And I almost did, because he knew exactly what to say to make me lose control of myself."

Loki felt sick. And he'd thought _his_ (adoptive) father was loathsome. The mere idea of using someone for such purposes – his own daughter, his _child_ – was revolting. And if even someone like himself, who certainly couldn't claim to have many morals, found it repulsive...

"Is he still alive?" Loki asked. He certainly had no qualms about tracking the man down and killing him if given the chance.

Edward let out a broken laugh, running a hand through his ponytail and knocking a few strands loose. "No. He was killed by a guy named Scar. He murdered Nina, too. She was only five."

Loki could offer his condolences, but knew it would most likely be taken as insincere even if it wasn't. He'd hardly given any of them reason to believe it. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because you were standing there looking like someone killed your dog for kicks," Edward said with a grimace, his eyes darting over to glance at Loki for the first time since he'd started speaking. "Look, full disclosure, Al told me you killed that alchemist a few months ago, and I hope you have a good fucking reason for that. I'm not gonna just forget about it, but I'm trying really hard to offer you a little trust, and what better way to do that than to commiserate over god-fucking-awful experiences? You've been on edge ever since that fight in the warehouse, and knowing Roy he's really going to chew you out for this move of yours. I'm just saying I get it, okay? You're not alone, so don't beat yourself up too much. Whatever that lady said to you really hit a nerve. I've been there. So. Uh. If you ever want to talk about it. Or anything."

"Thank you," Loki said quietly. And he meant it.

The door opened, cutting off any further conversation. The bad-tempered doctor poked his head out, his scowl even more pronounced than usual. He waved halfheartedly at Loki. "I'd yell at you for punching an old woman, but I don't give a flying fuck anymore. I can't believe you actually clobbered the hypnosis right outta her, and I'm wondering why we didn't try this sooner."

"So it actually worked?" Edward asked. "Is she awake?"

"Got a couple of shiners that'll take some time to heal and probably a concussion, but yeah, she's up, and she's pissed," Knox said. Loki took a step back, not surprised she'd want nothing to do with him after everything she'd learned. Knox rolled his eyes. "I think it has more to do with the general situation than with you, mister drama queen. Just get in here, both of you."

Loki hesitated. He wasn't sure he could bring himself to go in there, not right after he'd bashed her head into a table, not when she knew so much he'd gone to painstaking lengths to keep secret. Edward huffed and grabbed his sleeve, and Loki didn't resist as much as he could have. What was the point? They would find out regardless of his presence, and this way he had at least a chance at damage control.

Mustang no longer looked angry. A small mercy, though the appraising way he was watching Loki as he and Edward entered the room was mildly foreboding. He was standing close to Madame Christmas, his fingertips lightly resting on one of her shoulders. She was sitting in one of the chairs, her cheekbone already displaying a bruise the size of Loki's fist. A bandage had been wrapped over her forehead, pinpricks of red staining the center of it.

For once Loki was glad he didn't have his full strength in this body.

"It feels like someone's about to get executed in here," Knox grouched, glaring at them all from his vantage point by the door. "Mind control, my ass. I can't believe what you've got me caught up in, and trust me, I could care less about the creepy shit you're all involved in. So work it out before you all make my whole house feel like a wet blanket. I'm getting the hell out of here."

He slammed the door shut behind him as he left. Madame Christmas sighed, pressing the fingers on her undamaged hand against her temple. "I feel like shit, so hurry it up and ask your damn questions. And stop your mopin', Loki. It ain't befittin' of you. If anythin' gives you a pass to punch an old woman, it'd be the shitty situation I put you in. I'd take the headache over mind control any day."

"What did you learn?" Edward asked her. "Who's behind all this? It's not Father again, is it?"

"It's no one any of you would know, except maybe Loki," she said. "He's not exactly from Amestris."

Mustang glanced at Loki suspiciously, but didn't immediately start interrogating him. "I'm assuming they're from the same place, then. Where?"

Oh, Hel. This was going to end disastrously. Loki could still remember the wariness they'd held towards him when they'd briefly believed he was a homunculus.

"He's Asgardian as well?" Loki interjected before she could reply to Mustang. If he could just redirect the conversation a little, perhaps they could avoid the whole 'another world' part of this. And if the mastermind was Asgardian, well, Loki was intimately familiar with their standard battle tactics.

"I got no idea where he's from," she said, "but like you, Loki, he ain't human."

The room exploded in a cacophony of shouting.


	21. Chapter 21

What. The. Fuck.

Okay. Homunculus did not automatically equal evil, Ed, don't jump to conclusions without the facts. Greed hadn't been all bad, right? A dick, yeah, but so was Loki, so maybe general dickery was to be expected with homunculi.

But Loki couldn't be a homunculi; he didn't have their instant healing factor.

But he _did_ have an awfully elitist view of the world sometimes.

Still, he didn't seem to have any absurdly special skills, not like they did.

He'd called Ed and Roy 'you humans', though.

Fucking hell, why was Ed even bothering with these mental gymnastics? There was a lady _right fucking here_ , the one who'd dropped this bombshell on them without warning in the first place, and it was a waste of time to start conjecturing when she'd probably invalidate half of his thoughts in seconds anyway.

Loki didn't look too shocked by the statement. More resigned than anything, really. A little more surprising was the lack of surprise on _Al's_ face.

Wait, did he know about this? And he didn't tell any of them? Al was entitled to his secrets, and yeah, Ed could get behind interpersonal confidentiality, but with something like this, that would have an impact on all of them? It stung.

And of course, there was the matter of the guy mind-controlling others with a _glowing rock_. Even a homunculus shouldn't have been able to do that, but then, Father had defied a hell of a lot of logic, so fuck knows what was possible. If you'd asked Ed a few years ago, he would have said shapeshifting was impossible. Was it Father or someone else? Ed forced himself to tune back into the "conversation" happening around him.

"…How does my race have anything to do with what's been going on?!" Loki was yelling, his shoulders rising defensively. Any semblance of calm he'd regained since his last outburst was out the window, and Ed wasn't denying his own part in the escalation with the shouting.

"I'd say it's pretty damn important!" Edward yelled back.

"Who do you work for?" Roy said, his voice raised so he'd actually be heard.

"Just calm down, guys!" Al cried, his hands raised in a placating gesture. Madame Christmas was holding her head in her hands, her grimace probably partly in thanks to the volume in the room.

"This is irrelevant to the situation – "

"Yes it _fucking is_ relevant!" Ed couldn't believe this. Irrelevant? Even assuming Loki was being honest in saying he wasn't one of the bad guys, this would have been good to know.

"Is it Father? Did he send you?" Roy took a threatening step towards Loki, who didn't back down but straightened even more to tower over Roy. Al tried to defuse the situation, but neither of them were paying attention to him.

"Guys, please, let's just calm down and talk this out civilly – "

"From what you've told me, the creature you call Father is _dead_. I never met him," Loki hissed.

"Then who made you? Homunculi don't just make themselves," Ed snapped. "He's the only one we know about who had that sort of knowledge!"

Loki threw his hands up in frustration. "I'm not a homunculus, you imbeciles! Mustang here confirmed that himself the first time I met you!"

"Don't drag that into this," Roy growled. "I could have been wrong. There's a lot we don't know about homunculi. King Bradley didn't heal, either."

"Everyone _shut up!_ " Al shouted, forcing himself between Roy and Loki and shoving them apart. Well, sort of. Only Roy actually got pushed back a couple of steps, but Loki obligingly took a step back on his own a second later so it didn't make much of a difference. Ed got a sharp glare from Al when he opened his mouth to keep arguing – what can he say, he's got a "volatile personality" – and Al took the brief silence to let out a longsuffering sigh.

"We're all adults here," he said, fixing both Roy and Loki with pointed looks. "So act like it. Let's talk this out calmly and rationally and maybe we'll actually get somewhere."

Neither of them looked especially chastened, but no one started yelling again so Ed supposed Al's outburst could be considered successful enough. Al was good like that – he was so soft-spoken most of the time Ed forgot just how much influence Al could have over the room if he really tried.

"So, Madame, is Loki a homunculus or not?" Roy asked, a lot more calmly this time.

"No," Madame Christmas said irritably.

Oh, great, now there was something other than a human or homunculus? What the fuck else was there? A Philosopher's Stone, like Hohenheim had (sort of) been? A chimera? Or something else completely? The possibilities made Ed feel uneasy. "Then what the hell is he?"

She shrugged, which was an even more vague and frustrating response than he'd expected. Fucking hell. Ed barely knew this woman – he'd met her for the first time a few days ago while she was brainwashed. But considering she was apparently related to _Roy_ he kind of expected someone… well. Someone not like her. "You can't just drop a bomb like that and not have anything to back it up with!" he snapped.

"None of you have an ounce of patience," she said, glowering at Ed with bloodshot eyes. "He's not a human, homunculus, or whatever other weird shit you kids got mixed up with in the past. Maybe if you just asked _nicely_ he'd go ahead and _tell_ you, instead'a goin' on the defensive."

Suddenly, something clicked in Ed's mind. "Wait a second," he said. "The price you paid, what Truth took from you. Did it take away whatever made you not human?" It would make a lot of sense, especially regarding the mystery surrounding the seemingly nonexistent toll Loki had paid. Even while believing he was being honest in saying he'd been forced through the Gate there were so many details that just didn't line up, and the lack of a quantifiable toll had been at the forefront.

Ed couldn't be sure, but Loki looked almost approving. "You really _are_ smarter than you look. You are correct. Physically, I am currently no different than you humans."

Ed raised his eyebrows, torn between curiosity and annoyance. "Okay, got that. But what on earth did Truth take from you? What _were_ you? A chimera?"

"An Asgardian," Loki said haughtily. Almost as soon as he said it a stricken expression flashed across his face, disappearing as suddenly as it showed up. _What was that about?_ Madame Christmas was looking at Loki strangely too. Ed wasn't the only one who noticed, clearly.

"He's lying," Roy said, his gaze focused on his aunt (whose existence Ed _still_ hadn't gotten over, by the way. How had he never known about her before this?).

She stared at Loki for a few long seconds, and he stared back just as intensely. Whatever she saw made her shake her head. "No. He's not lying."

If Ed hadn't been watching Loki as closely as he was, he would have missed the flicker of relief at her confirmation of his claim. Ed wasn't convinced she was telling the truth, and he doubted Roy was either.

"So, then, what exactly is an 'Asgardian?'" Roy asked, apparently deciding not to keep arguing over it.

"To the humans in my world, Asgardians are commonly considered gods," Loki said. Despite the arrogant words he didn't really sound like he believed what he was saying.

Ed snorted, unable to resist. "So you're a god? Is your title the 'Guardian of Asses?'" Loki looked at him strangely. Ed grinned sharply. "You know. Asgardian? _Ass_ -guardian? Come on, I can't have been the first to come up with that one. Your people were asking for it with that sort of name."

Any lingering goodwill in Loki's expression was chased away by a glower of pure poison, though Ed thought he detected a hint of mirth. Roy's eyebrows were raised like he couldn't believe what he'd just heard come out of Ed's mouth. Alphonse was wearing the Don't-Be-a-Shit face. Or possible the My-Brother-is-a-Goddamn-Moron face. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference.

But some of the stifling tension had dissipated, so Ed was gonna count it as a win.

"I am the God of Mischief," Loki sniffed.

"Oh, that's _much_ better," Ed scoffed.

Roy rolled his eyes. "You still haven't explained what an Asgardian actually is, and what makes them different from humans."

"Asgardians are an ancient race of warriors," Loki said. "We may look similar to you humans, but physically we are much more powerful, with much longer lifespans."

"How old are you, then?" Ed asked.

"One thousand forty-six," Loki said coolly.

"Really?" Al said, leaning forward with interest sparking in his eyes. Ed raised his eyebrows, caught off guard by Al's easy acceptance of Loki's claim. Yeah, he was definitely pressing Al about this later. How much did he know already?

"How the hell did you end up in Amestris?" Roy questioned.

Loki's hands clenched briefly, an air of discomfort briefly flickering over him. He didn't want to talk about it, that much was apparent. "I fell into a place known as the abyss, and awoke in Truth's domain. I should have died. I'm uncertain why I didn't, why I encountered him instead, and quite frankly it's irrelevant in this matter. I don't wish to speak more of it."

"So long story short, you lost your… Asgardian-ness to Truth?" Ed queried. Yeah, he was an asshole, but considering how open Loki was being right now Ed didn't want to push his luck by digging too much into an obviously sensitive subject.

"More specifically, my Asgardian physiology and my ability to use seidr," Loki said with a nod.

"Cider," Ed said flatly. Either Ed was missing something, or there was one more screw loose in Loki's head than he'd thought.

"You lot would likely refer to it as magic," Loki clarified.

"Yeah, right," Ed said.

"You expect us to believe you can do magic," Roy said, his tone hard to read. "Right after you tell us your nickname back in your home was the 'God of Mischief.'"

Loki quirked an eyebrow. "Well, yes."

"He's tellin' the truth," Madame Christmas said, earning incredulous looks from both Roy and Ed. She pinched the bridge of her nose in a way that was almost identical what Roy always did when he was frustrated. "Which out of us just recovered from goddamn mind control? You all got a nice, close look at what a magic stick from his part'a the universe can do to people here. If anythin' can serve as proof, I'd say that's at the top of the list."

"It didn't even work right," Ed said. "I _saw_ Halcrow touch Loki and Roy with it, and nothing happened to them."

"It wouldn't work on you either. Think about the common denominator, something both Mustang and I have in common that almost no one else in this world does," Loki pointed out. "It's only a theory, but I believe encountering Truth renders us immune."

Roy folded his arms, eyeing Loki contemplatively. "Are you sure?"

Loki nodded slowly, clearly giving his answer some thought. "As much as I can be. I wouldn't recommend allowing the scepter to touch you regardless, but considering we're the only two who seem to have escaped unaffected by its power it seems a likely assumption."

Well, at least Ed wouldn't have to worry about being mind-controlled, then. The reason behind Loki and Roy's apparent immunity was good to know, but also troubling. Rather than a hit-and-miss sort of power, it meant that almost no one in the world would be able to withstand it.

"Good. I hope you're right." Roy turned to Ed and Al. "Edward, Aphonse. Are either of you able to get in contact with that teacher of yours? Izumi, was it? She performed human transmutation too, didn't she?"

"Izumi Curtis," Ed said, his mind spinning as his eyes lit up with understanding. "As long as she's not out traveling, yeah, we can reach her."

"Do you think she'd be willing to lend us a hand?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I think so." If Loki was right, this was huge. They'd tried to avoid involving too many people because of the high risks involved – if anyone who knew their plans got brainwashed, they'd have to completely scrap it or risk the enemy knowing their every move. Fuck – Hawkeye getting brainwashed was such a bad-case situation, too, considering just how much about them she knew. Thank Truth they'd only decided to bring Knox into the fold _after_ she'd been mind-controlled, or they would've been discovered ages ago. "I'll call her and see if she can come down for a while."

"You do that," Roy said. "We need everyone we can get, especially if she's immune. I'm going to contact General Olivier Armstrong, too. I doubt Halcrow – and whoever's in control of him and the others – has made it up north yet, and she's in a much better position to help prevent this from spreading than we are."

"I'll go call Teacher right now," Al said. "The sooner we get her help, the better." He stepped out of the room.

Loki looked at Madame Christmas. "What was the name of the one in control? Did he tell you?"

"Thanos," she said. The name meant nothing to Ed, of course. Roy and Al looked just as clueless as he was.

Loki…

Well, the way Loki was eyeing the _second-story_ window like he was gonna dive straight out of it suggested he knew who it was, and saying it was bad would be an understatement.

* * *

In Asgard, it was rare to hear of a foe powerful enough to genuinely pose a threat to Odin, much less the realm as a whole. Loki had never been quite sure if this was because the number of such formidable beings was truly so small or if it was because no one was bold enough to suggest Odin's power wasn't all-reaching.

Still, rumors trickled in from the far corners of the universe, whispered in seedy establishments and travel hostels. Most were unsubstantiated or greatly exaggerated, but there were a few recurring ones that seemed to hold some truth.

The underlying aspects of the rumors surrounding the Mad Titan were not only consistent enough to indicate truth, but saying they were concerning would be the understatement of the millenia. Not that Odin or Thor ever would have listened to Loki if he'd said so. Or most Asgardians, really. Loki could hear Thor now, believing himself powerful enough to defeat any enemy who dared challenge him.

 _"But he's never faced_ me _in battle, brother,"_ Thor would say, grinning that brightly naïve smile of his, fist thumping against his chest. It would reek of certainty more than arrogance, because Thor would wholeheartedly believe in his own strength and have trouble even fathoming the kind of danger Loki understood existed out there. He'd yet to understand just how insignificant Asgard was in the grand scheme of things. It was but a tiny speck within the dizzying vastness of the universe.

Loki himself wasn't entirely sure just how powerful the Mad Titan was. It was hard to tell, given the nature of second or third-hand rumors (and there were virtually no first-hand accounts because they rarely survived to give it), but he believed enough to know he would never wish to face the Titan in any sort of battle. Nor did he wish to join him. Loki was a great many things, most of them unpleasant, but even he had no desire to take part in the systematic genocide of half the universe.

If the buzz was accurate and Thanos had indeed been killing such a massive number of living creatures without any true challenger, there was no doubt in Loki's mind the Mad Titan was one of the most dangerous opponents he could ever have the misfortune of encountering.

Almost no one was even willing to say the Titan's name aloud.

"All right, I'll bite," Mustang said. "Who's Thanos?"

"Someone I would rather have died than ended up facing," Loki said shortly. The room's temperature felt like it had dropped significantly, and he resisted the urge to rub his arms to chase away what he was reasonably certain were nothing more than imaginary chills. "Be thankful his influence in Amestris is limited. If he were here in person, he would have disposed of us all long ago."

"But what does he _want?_ " Edward asked.

"To kill half of the universe." Loki needed to leave. This was getting to be far more serious than he'd thought. He needed to get that scepter _now_ and take it away, as far away from here as possible. Perhaps Truth had the capability to keep it hidden. Even Loki, with all his vast knowledge of the universe, had never heard of Truth. It was likely his best opportunity to prevent the Mind Stone from returning to Thanos's hand.

To prevent the annihilation of 50% of this world's population.

Edward seemed to mull this over briefly before responding. "What a stupid goal. What is he, Stock-Villain Number Five? He just wants to see the world burn and shit? Even Father's motivations were better than that, and trust me, they were pretty unoriginal."

"Don't joke around about this," Loki said sharply, scrubbing a hand over his face before forcing himself to take a deep breath. "Most of what I know of him is conjecture, but I believe his motivation is to 'bring balance to the universe' through the deaths of half of everyone."

"That makes _no_ sense," Edward grumbled.

"I don't pretend to understand his underlying motives," Loki said. "I've never had the misfortune of encountering him until now, and quite frankly I'd like to get back off his radar as quickly as possible." Not that he had much of a chance of doing so. He doubted Thanos would forget him easily.

"Don't do anything rash," Mustang said. His sharp eyes were studying Loki carefully, as if he could tell exactly what Loki was planning. Perhaps he could. "We've played this sort of game before. Impulsiveness will only get us all killed. I know we haven't been on the best of terms in the past, but you're someone I want on our side. You're too smart to let an impulsive decision do you in, not this late in the game."

"Call your General friend," Loki said, not harshly. Damn this lot for making him feel even the slightest bit of sentimentality. "If she can spread the word outside of Central City like you say, then we may be able to prevent a great many deaths."

Mustang was still watching Loki like he expected him to make a run for it, but after a few moments he nodded. "I'll contact Major Armstrong as well. We've been here too long already. He'll be able to set us up with a new hideout and get Madame Christmas and her girls out of the city until this all blows over. Fullmetal, you up to giving him a call?"

Edward's expression twisted in a dismayed scowl. "I've told you not to call me that. And do I have to?"

"Would you rather call _General_ Armstrong?"

Edward's scowl twisted even further, taking on a note of fear. "One call to Major Armstrong, coming right up."

* * *

"I already knew you weren't the sharpest knife in the block, Mustang, but it seems like my opinion of you was still too high," Olivier said, her voice dripping with flat, icy disbelief. Roy grimaced, suddenly thankful for the hundreds of miles separating them. "What the hell is so bad in Central that you'd ask me to spend my valuable resources shutting down the trains leaving the city? Behind Grumman's back? I thought you two were deep in each other's pockets. And why are you being so goddamn secretive about it?"

"I don't think you'd believe me if I explained it without you getting to see it for yourself," Roy said wryly. He hadn't exactly picked up the phone expecting Olivier to do what he asked, even if he'd harbored a (very) faint hope she would. She was way too much of a pragmatic to believe something that sounded as crackheaded as mind control. Hell, even Roy himself was still questioning the legitimacy of it. He dug his fingers into his side, letting the sharp spikes of pain radiating from the bullet wound remind him that he couldn't afford to make any more mistakes.

"I am not about to get involved with another coup d'état without a damn good reason," Olivier snapped. "Especially after your men blamed the last one on me. Don't think I didn't notice you called from an outside line. Do you not understand just how catastrophic the effect of a total railway shutdown would be? It hasn't even been three years since the last government upheaval, and here you come swaggering along wanting to do it all again?"

"I'm not staging a coup d'état, General," Roy said, an edge of irritation creeping into his voice. "Grumman's been compromised. I can't get into the details over an unsecured line, but you have got to understand how serious this is. People – civilians – are dying, and because almost no one understands why nothing's being done to prevent this from spreading beyond the city. I'm probably too late to stop it entirely, but we _need_ to stem this before this whole damn country comes apart at the seams!"

There's silence for a few moments, and Roy almost thought she'd hung up on him until she let out a sharp exhale. "I can't shut down all the lines. I don't have the manpower for that sort of undertaking. But I'll covertly send out some men to make it difficult for trains leaving Central to reach their destinations, at least in the North and East. You'll have to find someone else to handle the West and South – they're too hard to reach from here without making a stop in Central first."

"Thank you," Roy said, relief and gratitude alleviating just the edge of the tension in his muscles. "I couldn't ask for anything more."

"It's already way more than I should be offering," Olivier said, her tone holding no trace of amusement. "You owe me, Mustang. _Big_. You'd better have the best damn explanation I've ever heard for this. I'm giving you a chance because you showed _some_ promise during the fight with those homunculi, more than most of you cowardly Central lot, but don't believe for a second that I'm doing this because I like you."

"Of course not," Roy said. He'd half been expecting her to reject him completely, and at most he'd been expecting her to agree to stop trains coming into the North. That she was offering to do something for the East as well was huge. "I'll explain everything as soon as I have the opportunity."

"Well, you won't have to wait long for it," she said, and he froze.

"What do you mean by that?"

"What, you expect me to just sit up here while something supposedly serious enough to destroy Amestris is going on? What kind of woman do you take me for?"

No. "No," Roy said sharply. "Stay away from Central. I'm serious. I am not letting you put yourself at – "

"Don't treat me like some delicate princess who needs to stay sitting up in her palace," Olivier growled, and Roy could _feel_ the ice radiating from her voice.

"Of course not," he snapped. "It has nothing to do with your skills, and everything to do with the fact that we've already lost major players and can't afford to put more at risk. If Central falls, you're one of the only high-ranking officers still in the game. We need you to be able to do what's necessary if it comes to that."

"If you had an explanation for all this mystery that was even halfway decent, maybe I would," she said. "Get off your high horse. I'll be in Central within a few days, and you'd better be ready to cough up your secrets when I get there."

The line disconnected, and Roy was left staring at the receiver with too much nervous adrenaline coursing through his veins and nothing to take it out on.

"God _damn it_ ," he hissed, slamming the phone down and stalking out of the room. He shouldn't be so surprised, he reminded himself. What had she done when she'd found out about the widespread corruption in the brass the last time? Killed one of them and strutted right into their ranks while making no secret of her actions, that's what. God, he should have seen this coming.

If she was able to keep herself out of their clutches, she'd be an invaluable ally, but losing her could have catastrophic effects. So much for _that_ safety net.

He'd have to lose Falman and Fuery for now, too. The North and East should be covered, but there was still the West and South to consider. There wasn't much traffic between Central and the South, but several major lines went from Central to the West. If he could get in contact with Lieutenant Colonel Miles he could probably count on the South's protection, so he'd send Falman and Fuery to the West for now. It had the added bonus of getting them out of the immediate danger, though Roy was wasn't thrilled about sending them off.

Roy hadn't missed this. The subterfuge, the risk, the possibility of catastrophic loss if anything went wrong. And like last time he'd have to rely on an unpredictable, dangerous ally. At least Laufeyson seemed less inclined to brazen murder than Scar had been, but that wasn't very comforting. He'd seen the look in Laufeyson's eyes. If he thought things weren't moving fast enough, Roy had no doubt Laufeyson would leave them all behind. They couldn't afford to lose him.

They had to prepare for war.

* * *

 **A/N:** I had this whole explanation of my thoughts on Loki probably being mind-controlled The Avengers to add clarity to some of Loki's thoughts this chapter, but the Marvel wiki beat me to it by confirming the theory. Here's a link to an article about it, if you haven't heard the news.

I can't wait for the next chapter, you guys. There are some awesome characters slated to show up very soon. Some that were mentioned in this chapter, and others that shall remain a surprise~


End file.
